


The Road Goes Ever On

by thehighwaywoman



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Case Fic, M/M, Teenage Winchesters, mini-nano, serial
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-21
Updated: 2012-07-21
Packaged: 2017-11-10 10:02:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 31
Words: 62,287
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/465040
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thehighwaywoman/pseuds/thehighwaywoman
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's around two a.m. and they're maybe halfway to Boone, driving US 421.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Mini-nano casefic. Originally posted on LiveJournal, 2008.

[ ](http://pics.livejournal.com/thehighwaywoman/pic/0000qtgt/)

It's around two a.m. and they're maybe halfway to Boone, driving US 421, when Dad kills the radio and pulls to the shoulder of the road. The tires crunching briefly over gravel shake Dean out of his half-asleep daze. They don't stop in the middle of a drive like this unless something's wrong.

"Dad?" Dean rubs his eyes and yawns. His mouth tastes of sour beer drunk a few hours ago and his ass burns from sitting too long in one position. He blinks, trying to focus. "What is it?"

John doesn't answer. Dean watches his dad fold his arms on the steering wheel and lean forward, looking for whatever it is that Dean hasn't spotted yet. He wishes he had a cup of coffee but makes do as best he can without it. He runs his hands through his hair, scratching his scalp, and goes over what he remembers about Appalachian monsters and ghosts. 

He waits, patiently as he can, to get the intel from Dad. Calculating the weaponry they could need and wondering whether or not he'll have to wake up Sam. Jesus, he hopes not. Sam's in bad shape these days, just turned sixteen, which means he's half walking hormone and half shitty mood, and he's hurting a lot from growing pains. Right now he's out colder than he's been in weeks, probably.

If this is gonna be fast, better they let him sleep. He and Dad won't be at each other's throats then, fucking up the hunt.

Dean's awake now, coffee or not. His hands tingle, eager for the cold barrel of a gun or the heft of a blade. "Dad, what are we after?" 

"Nothing." Dad takes the keys out of the ignition and stuffs them in his pocket. "Out of the car, Dean. Wake Sammy up and get him moving too."

"What?"

"Dean." It's not a question. More of a warning, even if he's not yelling. Dean knows that tone and he does as he's told without dicking around.

"Yes, sir." Dean reaches into the backseat and gives Sam a push. "Wake up."

Sam grumbles and throws his arm over his eyes. He looks pale, worn out. Dean's not sure this is a good idea. "Dad, maybe we should let him --"

"No." Dad twists around and taps Sam sharply on the shoulder. "Get up, son. Move out. Dean, you come on ahead with me. Sam, did you hear me?"

"It's the middle of the night." Sam struggles up, eyes puffy and mouth turned down. 

"Doesn't matter. Grab your stuff and let's go."

Sam looks at Dean, wrinkling his nose. Dean tries to telegraph that he doesn't know what's going on either, asking him to please just shut up and go with it. Sam glares at him, but he moves, and that's good enough.

It's cold outside. Dean shrugs into his coat, glad he remembered to grab it from the passenger seat. The way Dad's locking the doors, he doesn't think he'd get a chance to go back in after it. Dad's acting weird, and it's starting to freak him out.

He still waits for Dad to go first. Dad knows what's going on; Dean doesn't. With his warm breath fogging into mist on the cold mountain air, he holds the line, keeps an eye out for Sam and waits for orders.

Dad doesn't look at him. He stares at the trees instead. They're surrounded by forest and there's probably not another car or any houses around for miles. He doesn't say a word.

This really isn't right. Dean's sure of it now. "Dad, come on. What's out there?" 

"That's for you two to find out." 

"Huh?"

Dad waves him silent and heads for the trunk, popping it open. "Here." He passes Dean three bags, all of them heavy. From the clanking noise two of them make, Dean figures they've got weapons in there. 

"What is this?"

Dad acts like he didn't hear when Dean knows damn well he did. "Do you know where we are?"

_Shit._ Dad's asking about more than just the name of the highway, which means he's in trouble. He wasn't paying as good attention as he should have. He swallows. "No, sir."

"Me neither."

Dean blinks, startled. Dad always knows where he is on any map. _What is this, some kind of a test?_

"Best guess, we're somewhere around 36-206 and 81.670." Dad scratches his cheek. "Stay on US 421, and it should lead you clear through to Fort Fisher on the coast. Might be better to take back roads part of the way. Keep off local radar."

"What are you talking about?" Dean blurts without meaning to, scared and pissed and cold. "We're not gonna be on our own, are we? Where are you going?"

"Wrong question, Dean. It's not where I'm going. It's where you're going."

"What?" Dean repeats dumbly. Behind Dad, he catches sight of Sam out of the corner of his eye as he climbs out of the backseat. He shuffles sullenly into position, slouched over, hair in his eyes, hands in his pockets, just waiting for an excuse to pick a fight.

" _Dad,_ " Dean pushes. He has to know.

Dad breathes out, long and slow. "Walk with me a ways, son. Sam, you stay here."

***

When Dad tells him what's going on, Dean doesn't believe him at first. He's not actually gonna leave them there. He can't. That's not how they work. Ever.

"Do we have an understanding?" Dad asks. 

Dean has no idea how to answer. "I don't get it," is all he can think of, stumbling over the words.

Dad nods, like he didn't really hear what Dean said, like they've shaken hands on this bad idea and it's all settled. "Better get a move on. Walking'll keep you warm until morning, and then you can stop and figure out your game plan."

" _Dad._ "

"Dean."

Dean's been trained not to argue over orders. He learned how to swallow down the anger before Sam learned how to walk. 

But when they're crazy, stupid orders -- even if it makes his stomach uneasy at the disloyalty to think that -- but when Dad's _abandoning_ them -- "Just tell me why," he asks, knowing he's begging but he can't help it, okay? "Please?" 

Dad cuts him off before he starts and thank fuck, he's answering the question. "It's not about you. It's about Sam. Sam needs this. He's getting too complacent."

_He's sixteen,_ Dean thinks. 

"Sam figures he can wander off on his own any time he likes and we'll be there for him to come back to _when he's ready_ to come," Dad says. "Remember Tulsa? Seattle? Helena?"

_He's sixteen._

"So why don't you make us -- him -- walk the rest of the way to Boone?" Dean tries. "That ought to be far enough to --"

"No. If I turn him loose all on his own, he might never come back."

Dean grits his teeth. That's not true. He knows it isn't. Sam wouldn't walk away from his family, not forever, not on purpose. He couldn't.

"Sam can't always count on us to be there. He needs to learn his lesson before it's too late. If it isn't already. Do you understand?"

Dean does. His hands want to tighten into fists and he wants to yell, but he knows Dad'd drive away anyhow, quiet or loud. He still has to grit his teeth when he says, "Yes, sir."

"Get him through in one piece, son." Dad hesitates. "Look after yourself, too. I'll meet up with you at Fort Fisher. Sooner's better than later." He turns away, heading back to the car. 

Sam stands up straighter, squinting at Dad, wary like an animal that knows it's in trouble. He even backs away a step or two before he remembers himself and stays put. 

"Sam, go stand with your brother."

Sam's chin comes up. "Why?"

Dean feels cold inside and out as he nods to the empty space at his side. He can't lose it now that Dad's taking that last step. Gotta keep it together so Sam doesn't go postal. "Sammy, would you do it already?"

Like that'd work. Dean can see Sam's on red alert now, ready to punch and yell. "What's going on?"

"Dean'll fill you in." Dad unlocks the car and gets in. Sam tugs on the backseat door handle, which doesn't open. "Remember the rules. No stealing cars, and if you're dumb enough to hitch rides I'll be damn disappointed. You've got some cash in those bags, you've got guns, you've got clothes to last a while, and after that, you figure out what to do."

"Dean?" Sam's nervous now, inching suspiciously toward him.

Dean shakes his head and keeps his trap shut. He can't. Not before Dad's really gone, just in case it's not happening. In case.

"Dad?"

"Travel safe, boys." Dad shuts the car door. The engine turns over, bitchy-sounding. Sam gets out of the way just in time and doesn't bother pretending he's not hurrying to Dean. 

Sam sounds small and scared when he asks, "What's wrong?"

Dean watches Dad drive away, waiting until the glare of the taillights fades from sight, before he answers. "We're on our own."


	2. Chapter 2

The sun rises about 6:11 a.m. Eastern Standard Time by Dean's watch. A little over four hours since Dad drove away and about three hours, forty-five minutes since he and Sam started walking.

Dean's never been more relieved to see the sun come up. He and Sam are both used to the cold and the dark, yeah, but not like this. No idea where they were going except forward, one foot in front of the other, not enough warmth in their coats, gloves forgotten, pockets not enough to keep their fingers from going numb. He hadn't realized it'd be this chilly in early summer. He'd thought North Carolina was warmer all year. It's the first of June. Why's it still cold?

He should know these things. He's been stupid, and Dad knew that. Getting sloppy just like Dad says Sam is. It's on him as much as it is on Sam. Maybe more.

Three feet parallel to him, Sam drags his sneakers through the weedy grass on the shoulder. Dean had a hard time deciding who walked by the road and who walked by the woods. Neither's safe. In the end, he nudged Sam into trading off and kept his eyes open. No one drove past all night -- this has to be the ass-end of nowhere on U.S. #421 -- and nothing jumped out of the trees. They were lucky. 

As the first streaks of pale, watery sunlight coming from the East stripe his face like the negative of dirt, Dean sees that Sam's hunched over, same as he has been all night, arms crossed and hands tucked in his pits. He's staring blankly forward like he's sick or sleepwalking or thinking way too hard. If he's thinking, God knows what he'll come out with that can be coped with right now. He's only ever this quiet before the shit really hits the fan. Just like Dad.

Or maybe it's just because he's freaked, too. When Dean thinks that, a small, mean voice inside his head whispers _serves him right. This is his fault anyway._ He jerks away from the ugliness of that and catches sight of Sam tripping over something, maybe a rock, and stumbling. Dean forgets what he was thinking and catches him instinctively, straight-arming him back up. 

Does he say thanks? Hell, no. Sam huffs at him, glaring. _God,_ is he just like Dad. He's seen Dad ripped up from knee to ankle and too damn proud to take a crutch. 

The thought makes Dean uneasy. He pushes it away, concentrating on the road as it fades from dirty gray to dirty yellow, brightening up around him. It's not Sam's attitude is new, or even a big deal. What matters is the sun's up, and that means they can stop long enough to catch their breath. 

"Hey," he says, his voice sounding scratchy to him even though it hasn't been that long since he used it. "Break for fifteen."

Sam plods to a stop, still quiet. Still looking anywhere but at Dean.

Dean fidgets. He wishes Sam would go ahead and get it over with already, and he hopes Sam keeps his mouth shut at the same time. But he's used to that. 

Sam levers gingerly down on the dew-soaked grass, gritting his teeth. It's rough, putting that kind of mileage on a leg racked by cramps. Dean scans the verge fast, all of it looking the same as the rest of the forest behind them and all the forest ahead of them, but he's got good eyes and he gets lucky. "Sam."

Sam huffs quietly.

"Over there. Sit on that fallen tree." When Sam doesn't move, Dean adds, "Your choice, but if you get your jeans soaked, you're really gonna be miserable." 

Sam glares at him without much heat and moves crab-wise to the decaying tree, heaving himself up on the length. He slumps on his side and rests his head on his forearm and doesn't say a word.

Dean wants to break the silence, but doesn't know how. So he leaves it and gets to work, laying down all three of the duffels he's carried since Dad dropped them. The zippers sound way too loud when the rest of the world is hushed except for birds and squirrels and the noise Sam makes when he breathes.

There isn't much inside any of the bags. Less than he'd hoped, especially with how heavy they got the further he walked. The first one has some slim MRE packages. He counts. Ten of them. The next bag has clothes. Two T-shirts and one pair of extra jeans each. Three pairs of socks each. At the bottom is a bag of smooth pebbles that baffle Dean for a minute before he remembers the old trick about sucking on them to keep your mouth moist when there isn't much water to be had. 

Shit. _Water._ Dean goes through the next pack as fast as he can and comes up with four one-liter bottles. Not enough. Not nearly enough for even a week. The food won't last, either.

He has trouble swallowing. _Dad. This isn't fair. What do you want us to do?_

"Dean?" Sam breaks the silence. "What's wrong?"

The lie comes too easy. "Nothing. Stretch or something, would you? You're gonna cramp worse than before if you just lay there."

"Should have said something before."

"You should have known better."

Sam grumps and rolls off the log. He squats carefully and sticks one leg out in front of him, leaning into it. He looks like a freaking praying mantis.

"What are you staring at?" Sam's nostrils flare. "So what's in the bags?"

Dean fidgets. He hasn't figured out how to work this yet, what Sam doesn't need to know and what he does and what he's gonna figure out anyway. His head hurts. He would kill for a cup of coffee right now.

"Dean." Sam sits upright. "Someone's coming."

Dean listens intently. Sounds weird after a night with nothing but them on the road. "Diesel. Logging truck, probably." 

They sit motionless as the heavy, grimy vehicle grumbles up the road and past them, the driver looking bored out of his mind beneath the brim of his ball cap and over the beard covering almost his whole face. Only when it's gone and the driver could clearly have given less of a shit about them does Dean relax. Sam, too.

"Bet we could be lying here dead and he wouldn't have even slowed down."

Okay, he could have asked for a better way to break the ice, but whatever. "Shut up," Dean retorts, glad for familiar ground, digging deeper in the bags. Maybe they've got a false bottom or something.

Sam cranes to try and get a look inside. "Did he leave a map?"

"I don't know. I haven't looked all the way through yet."

"So how do we know we're going in the right direction?"

"He said follow U.S. #421. We're following. We're okay."

"Yeah, right." Sam snorts. He pauses as if he's thinking then nods, chin up, at the bags. "So what _do_ we have?"

It almost sounds like he's on the same page, like he could be talked around into making plans. Dean starts to hope for that.

Before he gets one word out, though, Sam's already found something more interesting. He bends to rifle through the grass and comes up with something tiny that shines silver. "Look."

"You found a bottle cap. Awesome."

Sam makes a face. "Screw you. It's a quarter with a hole in it."

"So?"

"So those are lucky, dickface." Sam wings the quarter at Dean, who catches it on reflex and stuffs it in his jacket pocket. It's cold and slimy with dew. 

"Freakin' magpie."

"You are." Sam looks at him. _Looks_ at him like Dean's seen him look at Dad. "Sorry I found a lucky piece. Wouldn't want any good luck, right? Not when we could walk three hundred fifty miles on our own for Dad."

"Don't you start this."

Sam ignores him. "Hey, I'm fine with walking. I'm great with walking." His voice rises in pitch. "You know how many highway legends there are? How many people get killed and dumped by the side of the road every --"

"That's not what happened to us!"

Sam looks at him, flat and empty. "I didn't say that." 

Dean grits his teeth, wishing to God he was better at this. That he knew what to say to make it right, because he can see what Dad never could -- the mouth just means Sam's scared. Confused. Mad, too, but only because the world doesn't make sense the way it should. _Work with me, Sam, would you? I'm doing the best I can here. I need you with me if we're gonna make it. Please._ "Sam --"

"Wait." Sam's tipped his head, listening again. "There's another one coming."

"What do you care? The way you tell it the Red Cross would drive on by even if whoever killed us was still waving the bloody ax."

"Shut up and let me listen, and don't even joke about that, okay? This sounds different." 

Dean's looking in the right direction and he sees them first: lights flashing blue, red, white. 

State troopers. Fuck. 

Bet that trucker paid more attention than it looked like and he reported two kids lost on the road. _Fuck._

Sam clamps down on Dean's arm, hurting him. "This is great! We could get him to give us a ride. That's not hitchhiking."

"No." Dean pushes Sammy back hard, not playing around. Sam doesn't get it, but he doesn't have time to explain. "Go. Go _now._ " 

"But Dean --"

"We don't have time for this. Move!"

Sam shoves back. "Why?"

"Because they'll take you," Dean blurts. _Goddamnit._ Sam goes pale and Dean rushes on because he started it, and now he has to finish it. He hurries the rest of it out. "You know better. If the cops figure out what's going on, they'll get CPS in this and then… Sam, would you just go?" Dean pushes him hard, almost toppling him over. 

He sees the surprise and then the anger in Sam's face, but Sam does it. He stumbles up and takes off. 

Dean grabs the bags, their weight chafing raw on his sore palms, and follows fast behind him. Together, they crash through the underbrush and through the trees before the cop car rushes past.


	3. Chapter 3

"You know," Sam says, grabbing an old pine branch to help swing himself over a hillock of dead limbs, "I bet that trucker didn't call the cops. They were probably just doing a sweep. No one's looking for us. They couldn't be." He hesitated, checking for Dean's reaction. "Right? No one could take me anywhere I didn't want to go."

"Says you." 

"I'm serious." Sam jumps in front of Dean and plants himself there, blocking Dean's way. He gestures as he talks, as if that emphasizes his point instead of making him look like a geeky windmill. "I'm sixteen."

"Exactly." Dean pushes past him. 

"No." Sam swerves in front of Dean again. "You're twenty and you're my brother. It's not like when we were little."

 _Like that was such a long-ass time ago_ , Dean thinks. "And?"

" _And_ , if there were cops who wanted to make a deal about it, you're old enough to take care of me." Sam waves harder as he gets more excited, dislodging a scatter of dry brown needles off a dead pine limb. " _Dean._ You and I, we could --"

Dean cuts him off right then, because no matter what he is _not_ going to go there. "No. We couldn't."

"But Dean --"

" _Sam._ Enough, okay?"

Sam crosses his arms tightly and sticks his chin out. "I wish you'd just listen," he mumbles defiantly.

Dean gives up. "Later, okay? Maybe. Let's get through this first, huh?"

Sam won't look at him. "Whatever."

"Great. We agree. Now c'mon. The road can't be that far away." Dean stands as high as he can and manages to peer over the top of Sam's head. "In fact, I think I can see it from here."

"You can?" Sam cranes to look over his shoulder. "I don't."

"Yeah, well, I've got better eyes than you."

"No you don't," Sam protests, but with the faintest hint of a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. "You're pulling the older and wiser crap again."

"When I'm right, I'm right." Dean walks past Sam, swearing under his breath when he gets his calf tangled up on a string of briars. Walking all day long in the woods without a compass, it's amazing how fast his legs started to ache and burn when trekking through piles of mulched leaves and over fallen trees.

Sam's gotta be in serious state of hurt by now. Dean eyes him as he turns reluctantly to catch up. "You, uh… you need a hand?"

"I'm fine."

"Yeah. Right." Dean studies him, cataloguing the grim set of Sam's lips and the way he's gone white around his stupid girly dimple. "Let me give you a hand, dude."

"I said I'm fine. I'm not a kid."

"Suit yourself." Dean gets moving. Now he's got the direction fixed, he can see the road more clearly the closer they get to it. He's frustrated enough with Sam that he almost -- almost -- doesn't feel bad about it when he bends a healthy pine branch out of the way to walk past and lets it snap back just in time to smack Sam on the top of his head.

"Hey! What was that for, jerk?"

"Oops," he apologizes around a smirk meant to drive Sam insane. "Few more yards, Sammy, and we're there. We can rest."

"Until someone drives by," Sam grumbles, dour as a priest.

Dean mutters something John would wash his mouth out for and stomps ahead.

***

Whether it's luck or chance or whatever, the spot at which Dean and Sam fight their way out of the bracken is down the road from an honest-to-God picnic shelter. Probably for tourists driving up to see the leaves change color. Right now everything's either green or dead and so it's deserted, as is the road. The road itself is in bad shape, asphalt cracked and crumbling. 

Might be okay, though. He makes sure, checking it all out first before letting Sam under the shelter, kicking the pine supports to make sure they're sound, scanning the old dirt dauber's nests choking the rafters for any signs of life, testing the door marked "HEAD" and finding it unlocked -- not that that'd matter. He tries the sink, refusing to let his disappointment show when it screeches, but no water comes out.

This place really has been abandoned, hasn't it? Totally forgotten about.

"Can I come play?" Sam asks, shifting his weight uncomfortably from foot to foot where Dean warned him to stay at the perimeter. He's acting weirder than usual, obeying orders and all. Granted, they're his orders and not Dad's, but…

 _Don't question it, just go with it._

"Siddown," Dean tells him, pointing at the rickety, splintery picnic table, the kind with the benches attached on both sides. He gives Sam what dignity he can back by looking away, letting Sam get settled before joining him. He drops their bags, scrounges through one and hands over an MRE. "Eat."

Sam takes it without enthusiasm. "Do we have any aspirin?"

"Dunno, Sam. I never did get a chance to check all the way through."

"Let me know, okay?" Sam fidgets. "Thanks." He ducks his head fast, tears open his MRE and digs in.

Dean reaches over and ruffles his hair for the sheer hell of it. Sam squawks around a mouthful of franks and beans -- nasty -- and punches, missing by a mile. 

"Sloppy," Dean chides, satisfied that Sammy'll be okay for now. For a while, even. He's moody and he's all arms and legs he doesn't know what to do with and he's not used to this pace, but Dean figures Sam'll surprise both of them. He's got what it takes. Dean's sure he does.

Most important? He's made the choice to go _with_ Dean, not to run away from him. He's chosen to be loyal. That matters. 

They'll be okay.

Calmer still now and damn glad because it's about time, Dean turns all his attention back to the packs. He searches patiently, organizing their supplies in neat piles as he goes. Sam's not dumb. Dean's sure he already knows they've got just about dick. Better not to hide anything from him anyway, right? Sam always finds out, and when he does, he gets pissed. So.

He makes a list as he goes along, storing it in the back of his head so he can check it off as they eat the food, drink the water, run through the clothes and -- he riffles through a small fold of money -- spend their whole thirty dollars. Nowhere near enough for even one bus ticket or more than one tank of gas if they decided to cheat.

Dean keeps his expression calm as he thinks, dark and ugly, _Thanks, Dad. Thanks a fuck of a lot for nothing._

Beside him, Sam finishes his MRE and licks the bean juice from its foil container. He really was hungry, wasn't he? Dean considers giving him another, almost reaching for one when Sam pipes up.

"Dean?" Sam sounds almost… shy. Weird.

"What?" Dean asks, suspicious.

"You really think we can do this?" 

When Dean turns to Sam, amazed because that was an honest to God brother talking, not a walking attitude with a mouth, Sam's picking at his nails, focused on them like an eagle on a rabbit. "You honestly believe we can walk all the way and be okay? You and me?"

Dean gives in to a sudden urge and punches him lightly on the shoulder. "Yeah, I do." Relief makes his heart light enough to float away. "You and me."

"We're good?" Sam asks, barely out loud. Weirder still.

"Yeah," Dean replies, confused. "We're always good. Why wouldn't we--"

"Nothing. Forget it." Sam grins and shakes his head, agreeing in his own way. "Cool."

"Think of it this way, dude. It'll be a hell of a story to tell hotass blondes at bars, right? No way they'll be able to turn away from a tale of woe like this." He leers at Sam.

Sam blushes dark red, confusing Dean all over again, and curls his lip. "I guess."

 _Oh, come on._ "What now?" Dean demands, annoyed.

" _Nothing._ " Sam stands up, pissiness radiating from him, and stomps to the edge of the shelter. He bends, scoops a handful of the grimy old gravel that used to be a parking lot, and turns, heading for the far side next to the woods.

Dean tracks him as he goes. "Be careful."

"Screw you." Sam throws one of the rocks. A hollow _tock_ follows immediately after. "I'm practicing my aim. Is that okay?"

"I'm just trying to take care of you, man. What's your problem?"

Sam refuses to answer, so before Dean says something that'll get him really worked up, he bites his tongue and goes back to the packs, making one last sweep through in search of hidden pockets.

When his fingertips brush an unexpected zipper, he almost flinches. _What the hell…?_

_Tock. Tock. Tock._

The tiny zipper, messily painted black so that it's not visible unless you deliberately look for it, pulls back almost silently. And inside, because the world is just that fucked up this way, what he finds inside throws him into yet another tailspin of confusion.

Packets of aspirin. Band-aids. A baggie full of pills with a torn-off label stuck inside, _for Sammy_ scribbled across it in black marker. When Dean reads the rest of the label, he sees that they're potassium supplements. They're to help with Sam's growing pains and leg cramps.

That's not all. There's something underneath in a black-painted canvas pouch about the size of a postage stamp. It's round and cold. Baffled, Dean pulls open the dental-floss-like drawstring and lets the contents tumble out on his palm.

His hand shuts tight and fast around what he's got. He sits very still, eyes shut. _Dammit, Dad._

"Hey, Dean, look!" 

Dean looks up, heart rate jumping. His stomach flips with relief when he sees that Sam's fixated on something in his own hand. "Jesus, Sam, give me a heart attack."

Sam makes a face at him. "Check it out." He flops down next to Dean, holding out his hand. "A dime with a hole in it. Just like the quarter from this morning."

"No kidding." Dean examines the dime, curious. "You think maybe it's some kind of local tradition?"

"Could be." Sam looks past him. "Dean… it'll be dark soon. We walked all day."

"Yeah." Dean stands, pushing his hand in his pocket and emptying it. "Figure we'll bed down here. Grab a sweatshirt or something and use it for a pillow." Sam yawns at that, jaw-crackingly wide, and Dean laughs despite himself. "Bedtime, man. I'm gonna, um… I'm gonna take a leak, okay? Over there. In the woods. Wait here for me."

"Where else am I gonna go?" Sam's already rummaging through their clothing supply. "You'll be back soon, right?"

"'Course." Dean makes himself smile at Sam, easy-breezin', waits until he's distracted, and makes the tracks a man with a full bladder would reasonably be expected to make. 

He stops just out of sight and puts his hand back in his pocket, the touch of cold metal he stowed in there making his fingertips tingle. He knows what it is. He's seen it before, a long time ago.

_Dammit! What am I supposed to do with this, Dad? Why'd you leave it for me?_


	4. Chapter 4

_June 1983  
8 P.M._

"Time to go to sleep." Mommy smoothes his bangs off his forehead, coaxing them away from his eyes. He fights to keep them open because even if he is all tucked in with the quilt drawn up beneath his chin and the pillows punched up all fat under his head, he's not _ready_ to go to bed yet.

She taps his downturned lips, tickling him until he laughs. "There's my angel."

"Mom," he protests. Four years old is _way_ too old for baby names. Baby names are for _babies_ , like Sammy. 

She smiles at him and leans down to kiss his cheek. "So you're too old to be my angel?"

Dean isn't sure, when she says it that way.

"Maybe for a little while longer then, hmm?" She pats his hand. "You're going to be such a good man when you grow up, Dean, but you know what? You'll always be my little boy."

That makes him feel warm inside. Better than the blankets.

Dean watches her as she turns on the night light, thinking _she's_ the angel in her pretty white nightgown. He struggles up, knocking the quilt off. "Mommy? How soon _am_ I gonna grow up?"

She looks at him like she's thinking hard. He starts to get worried that he's done something wrong, but then she smiles. "Lie down, Dean. I'll be right back. I promise."

He hopes Sammy doesn't start crying while she's gone, and he doesn't. He stays quiet.

When she returns, she's holding a little black bag in her hand. She sits beside him and takes his hand, letting what's in the bag slide out on his palm. He stares at it, confused, then up at her. He's not supposed to play with stuff like this.

"You'll grow up sooner than you can imagine," she says. "And when you do, this will be yours." She helps him make a fist and holds it for a minute before opening his fingers. "This belonged to my father, and his father, and his father, and his father…"

"And now it's mine?" Dean reluctantly lets Mommy take it back.

"It will be someday. When you're old enough to take care of it. You'll know you're all grown up when it fits you, and when you wear it it'll always remind you how much your family loves you, no matter where you are. Okay?" She slides it back into the pouch. "Until then, we have to keep it safe."

"Where? In a bank?"

"How about the glove compartment in Daddy's car?" She winks at him, sharing the joke between them. "It's safer than any bank in the whole wide world. Nothing bad can happen in there."

"Promise?"

She draws an X over her heart. "I swear."

 

_June 2, 1999  
Two A.M._

"What are you doing?"

Dean flinches, automatically closing his hand tight around the tiny pouch as Sam slumps down beside him on a patch of dry pine needles next to the shelter. He smells of old sweat, road grime, and like he hasn't had a shower in a few days. Even though the night's getting damn cold again now that the sun's gone down he's warm, as if he'd been under a pile of blankets in a bed instead of sprawled out on a picnic bench.

"Nothing." He clears his throat. "You should be asleep. Go back to bed."

"Uh-uh." Sam yawns and tries to crack his neck. "I twisted around weird. My ass is numb and my head hurts."

"Lay down on your other side."

"Don't want to. I'm awake now." Sam props his elbows on his knees and rests his chin in his hands. His eyes are still bleary. He yawns again.

"You're not fooling anyone."

"So what." It's not a question, and it's barely out before he nods at Dean's closed hand. "Is that from Dad?"

The stiff edges of the canvas irritate Dean's palm. "I found it in the bag. Guess he left it there by mistake."

"How come?" Sam tries to pry open Dean's fingers. "Can I see?" 

Dean lets him snag the pouch and pull the drawstrings open. He frowns, puzzled. "It's empty."

"Told you it was a mistake."

"Thought you always said Dad didn't make mistakes."

"Everybody does."

"Huh." Sam looks at him, way too closely. Right before Dean's about to punch him in the head, he shrugs and turns away with another yawn. "It's three hundred and fifty miles to Fort Fisher," he says. "I did the math."

Dean rolls his eyes.

"Someone had to," Sam protests. He starts counting on his fingers. "Three hundred fifty miles. If we can do ten miles a day, then it'll take us thirty-five days to get there _if_ nothing happens --"

"Don't say that, okay? Nothing's gonna --"

"-- _if_ nothing goes wrong," Sam insists. "Thirty-five days."

Dean nods, relieved. "And he gave us all summer. See? I told you we'd be okay."

Sam snorts. Then -- and he hasn't done this in years, but like it's nothing at all now -- he lets go of his chin and drops his head to rest on Dean's shoulder. "Since when have we ever made it from one point to another without the shit hitting the fan?"

"Language, dude."

"Like you don't cuss." Sam wriggles, trying to get comfortable. 

"Yeah, well, you're not me."

"And you're not Dad." 

Dean goes still. The quiet is way too loud, broken only by the sounds of breathing and grasshoppers. He misses the Impala's growling so sharply it hurts. 

Sam takes a deep breath and finishes his thought. "That's why I'm still here."

"Sam, don't." He tries to shake his brother off. Too warm, too close, too _much_ "Take an aspirin and a vitamin and go back to bed."

Sam keeps his ass right where he's parked it. 

Dean closes his hand tightly around what he palmed and hid there before Sam took the bag. 

_I can't keep up with all of this,_ he thinks. _Sam's the brain, not me. I wasn't supposed to get this until I was old enough to be on my own. I know she told you that before… before. So why now? Does this mean you're gone for good, or what? That even if we get all the way to Fort Fisher, you won't be there because --_

The thought makes his mouth taste sour and metallic with fear. He's relieved as hell when Sam's attention wanders and he drags Dean along for the ride. "Hey. You think there's anything to hunt around here?"

"Doubt it."

"Why not?"

"'Cause I don't see any signs, that's why not."

"Bet there are," Sam persists, chin jutting out. Dean's surprised by how sharp the point is. Sam lost his baby fat somewhere when he wasn't looking. Maybe with this last growth spurt.

He shakes it off and tries to keep up, bickering right back, because that's easier. "Doesn't matter what you 'bet'. What matters is what's in front of you. What you can see with your own two eyes. You know that."

"Please." Sam shakes his head to get the hair out of his eyes. His chin bumps Dean's shoulder and damn, he was right. _Pointy._ Ow. 

"This place, this road, they have to be this empty for a reason," Sam persists. "I don't think anyone's been here for years. Maybe there's angry spirits that made them all leave. Maybe the coins mean something, like they ward off wraiths or they're tribute for a --"

"You're just guessing." 

"Yeah, but --"

"I need whiskey to deal with this and damn if we aren't fresh out," Dean grumbles, getting up. He smacks at his ass and thighs to clear off the pine needles clinging to him. " _If_ there's anything out here to hunt, then we'll hunt it." _Please don't let there be. I can't do all this and hunt too._ " _If._ Okay?" 

Sam pulls his knees up and rests his chin on them this time. He looks sideways at Dean, his forehead furrowing. "Where'd you get the ring?"

Dean shoves his hand in his pocket, hiding the gleam of silver around his finger. He put it on when he stood, not thinking about anything except not dropping it. "Doesn't matter."

"But --"

"Leave it, Sam!"

Sam shakes his head and closes off like a seal, drawn off to that weird place inside his head where Dean never has known how to follow him. Sorry right away for yelling at him, Dean nudges Sam with the toe of his boot. "'We' means you and me, Sam. Like we agreed."

Sam doesn't smile. "Yeah. Dean? What kind of weapons did Dad pack for us?"

The joke Dean has ready about buddy movies dies unspoken on his tongue. 

"I figured. He didn't give us anything, did he?" Sam looks up through the fringe of his hair. "Just enough for us to know we don't have a choice about figuring out how to take care of ourselves."

"A knife," Dean offers, almost desperate. "We've got a knife. And there's salt packets in the MRE's."

Sam goes blank as empty glass. "I wish you could hear yourself, Dean, I really do."

"Hey," Dean protests. "It's not like I'm --" 

"Yes. You are. Anything so you don't have to face the way things really are, Dean." Sam glares at him. "Dad doesn't want us to make it on our own. He lied to you. What he really wants is for us to get stuck somewhere so he has to come rescue us, and he wants us to get so scared we'll never even think about doing something different with our lives and just go with whatever he wants until we end up dead."

"That's not fair and you know it."

"Since when is anything about our lives fair?"

Dean clenches his fists, mad enough to really hurt Sam and trying his damndest not to. _Why do you have to make this harder than it already is? Huh? I'm trying my best here. Damn it!_

Sam gets up, not bothering to brush off his own coating of pine needles. He digs around in the pile they've flattened and comes up with a handful of acorns. "Knew there was something poking me," he mumbles. "Anyway. We've got to make some plans. In case." 

He heads for the tree line and just inside, just far enough into the trees that he can still be seen but is still guaranteed to give Dean a heart attack with nerves, which he totally knows, the little shit. He throws a couple of acorns deep into the woods, hitting a tree each time. _Tock. Tock._

Dean needs something to hit, but all he's got are words and he sucks at words. He tries for the easiest distraction first. The out. "Why do you care so much about weapons and ghosts all of a sudden? You hate hunting. You never wanted to find a hunt before."

Sam shrugs, looking uncomfortable. "I can change."

"I'm not asking you to."

"I know." Almost too quietly for someone who isn't trained to hear, Sam mutters, "That's why I want to. For you." He whips another acorn, really putting his back into it this time. It's a hell of a throw, a lucky shot straight through stand after stand of pine trees, and it takes a couple seconds longer than before to hear it hit a target.

Except this time it doesn't go _tock_. It goes _splash_.


	5. Chapter 5

_Splash._ The hollow sound of water echoes in Dean's ears, rippling through the trees around them. He almost wants to turn and watch the noise wash through dark of night blanketing the ramshackle, abandoned shelter, as if a sound could take on a shape and color.

It's cold, it's past midnight, and they're all alone, but hope kindles a fire inside him.

"Water. I think I found water." Sam turns from the trees, arm still outstretched as if he wants to throw another acorn and hear it _splash_ again. Though Dean can barely see him, his excitement is almost blinding. "Dean! I think --"

"Damn me if I don't believe you did." Dean starts forward, putting a hand out in Sam's direction to tell him to lag behind. "I'll check it out." 

"I'm coming with you," Sam insists, hurrying to catch up. "I'm the one who found it."

"Yeah, I heard you the first time, Columbus." Dean cuffs the top of Sam's head, pulling the blow so he doesn't actually land harder than a tap for the sake of calming him down. 

Sam shakes it off with an annoyed grunt and grabs Dean above the elbow. "I'm coming with you," he insists. His fingers dig into the worn flannel of Dean's shirt. "You're not leaving me here. Okay?"

Dean hesitates, opens his mouth, then closes it as he gets what Sam means. 

Sam shifts his weight like he's nervous. "Please?"

"Yeah. Yeah, all right." Dean tries to think, to readjust his brain again. "Stay behind me. Walk where I walk. And keep quiet so I can listen."

"For what?" Sam snorts. "I'm pretty sure we're alone out here." His sarcasm fades. "No cars. No people. Nothing."

"There's water," Dean tries to joke. "Maybe. You promise you'll let me make sure it's safe first before you go and do something stupid?"

Sam huffs, indignant. Dean bets he wants to say something else -- when doesn't he? -- but wonders never cease, he huffs out an impatient breath, zips his lips and nods, falling into position. 

Dean breathes easier. One down, probably one zillion left to go.

***

Dean finally gets what people mean by _can't see the forest for the trees_. As he takes point and leads Sam through the forest, away from the shelter, the moonlight almost completely fails to penetrate the thick cover of branches and he can't see where he's going. He can only feel his way over trees and through tangled bracken, hoping he doesn't fall.

Dean takes a breath, concentrates, and lets his other senses guide him. His feet find the safe path one step at a time without the benefit of eyesight, testing for weaknesses and holes and exposed roots and moving forward when he's sure. He listens hard until he catches the thread of sound that _might_ be running water -- Jesus, how far did Sammy manage to throw that acorn? -- and guides his body in that direction. Sam keeps close, a warm presence at his back that makes his front feel too cold by comparison. 

Every now and then, Sam bumps into him -- more like he walks close enough to nudge -- and whether he's reminding Dean that he's back there or being a general pain or needing to make sure they're still together, Dean doesn’t know. Probably all of the above. 

When he stops to reach back and poke Sam and make him quit it, something stiff and dry catches his hair and clings to him.

Dean's in the zone now, everything he's learned on night hunts coming back to him with each breath he slowly takes, so he doesn't yelp or stumble back. He doesn't do more than blink, but behind his eyes his mind whirs, assessing the situation. He'll feel like a dick if it's just a bird, but like hell will he give anything else the advantage of his freaking out. 

Whatever's tangled in his hair isn't letting go. 

Carefully, slowly, he reaches up as if he's just scratching his head, fingertips questing lightly. He does _not_ flinch when he finds the whatever-it-is, brushing its surface with his thumb. It's light, dry, and doesn't smell like anything. He tugs faintly at it, and it gives.

If it's a leaf, he's going to be _so_ pissed.

A tweak of finger and thumb, and the foreign object detaches from its hold, crumpling in his hand. Dean brings it down to examine it, congratulating himself on his total rico suave-ness, and shakes his head a half-inch in disgust. It's hard to tell when he can barely see, but he thinks it's just a scrap of cloth, like a shred off an old T-shirt or something. Jeez. Must have gotten left behind by the last people before them heading for the water, however long ago that was. No wonder it's almost crumbly to the touch -- has to be ancient.

No. Wait. He'd thought the brittle part was a scrap of a logo, but… 

Dean's heart rate picks up, please God not loud enough for Sammy to notice, as he examines the cloth. He recognizes the texture now. Blood. Old, dried blood. And now that he's running it through his fingers instead of relying on his unreliable eyes, he can tell the cloth's been shredded, not casually ripped off. Someone might have been running down here, all right, but they weren't laughing while they did it. They were being chased.

 _Shit._ Dean's palms grow damp with nerves. This is bad. They should go back. Everything in him is telling him to turn his ass around and run. 

But… water. Two of their bottles are empty already. Gotta have more.

 _Send Sam back to get the empties?_ his brain questions, immediately coming back with, _no, can't let him go off on his own._

 _What would Dad do?_

Dean knows exactly what Sam would say Dad _could_ do, and with the horse he rode in on, but that's all Dean has to work with -- what he's been taught. 

And it's up to Dean to make the decision now, so he does. He wads the cloth in as tight of a ball as he can manage and tosses it to their left, saying casually, "Just a leaf. Stay close."

He can _feel_ Sam's wariness and disbelief, but whatever magic's at work tonight, Sam doesn't say a thing.

Dean takes a deep breath, clenches his hand tight so that the ring cuts into his finger, and moves forward through the choked blackness of the tangled trees.

***

The water, when they find it, isn't what Dean expected. Further away than he'd thought at first, and when it was loud enough that there should have been only a couple steps before he stepped in, there were yards left to go. His feet don't agree with his brain, and it doesn't sit well with him.

The trees grow far enough away from the water that the moon's light gets through, illuminating a rough circle around them. It looks… normal. An ordinary creek cutting through the woods, running smooth and mostly quiet over a bed of sandy dirt, dead leaves, and rock. 

Sam touches him again as he's scanning the creek, searching for anything from snails to, he doesn't know, enchanted frogs maybe. That'd be about the right level of weird. "Looks okay," Sam says in his ear, breath hot, tickling inside his head. "Can I?"

Dean knew this was coming. "Me first," he says, kneeling carefully on the crumbly edge. "You keep watch."

He splashes the clear surface, then slides his hand beneath the water.

Nothing happens.

It's just water.

Behind him, Sam laughs, a little too loud, a little too crazy. That's okay. Dean's more than half tempted to join in. "Okay, okay," he pretends to grouch, cupping a handful of water to splatter Sam with, hooting gleefully when Sam sputters and shakes his head like a dog. He wipes his hand on his leg, trying to hide the way he's shaking from relief. "Can't blame a guy for being careful, can you?" He points at Sam. "Don't even start."

Sam smirks at him and pantomimes zipping his lips. 

"Wiseass."

"Can I?" Sam asks again. It takes Dean a startled second to realize Sam actually is asking permission. 

"Um." He blinks. "Sure. Yeah. I think it's safe."

The weight of Sam's full body smacks him from the side, nearly giving Dean a heart attack before Sam's arm hooks over his shoulder and comprehension hits: Sam's _hugging_ him.

Seriously. What the hell?

He tries to pull away. "Dude. I'm not a girl. Watch the hands."

Sam doesn't let go, not right away. Not until Dean elbows him in the side, in the soft part between ribs and hip. He pulls his strength again, though he uses enough to make sure he gets his point across.

And Sam still doesn't let go until he's whispered, "Thanks."

Dean shrugs, tucking his hands under his arms. "Um. Whatever. Just watch yourself. It's cold."

"Awesome." Sam starts taking off his shoes and socks.

"What, you're going wading? Dude, I told you it's _cold._ "

"I won't go far. Promise." 

"Watch for anything sharp," Dean warns. "I can't see the bottom that well."

"Blah, blah, blah," Sam mocks, stepping carefully into the creek. He squeaks like a girl when the shock of the cold washes over him, slips on a smooth-washed stone, and falls smack on his ass. As soon as he comes up cussin' and Dean knows he's okay, he laughs his chest sore. Sam looks like an oversized cross between a scarecrow and a wet cat as he sprawls in the water and the moonlight, his lips pursed pissily tight and sopping hair plastered to his face.

"I'm going to get frostbite," Sam predicts sourly.

"And whose fault is that?" Dean fires back. He takes off his flannel overshirt. "We'll dry you off with this as best we can, get you back up to the shelter, and you can layer up with everything else in the packs. You'll live."

He's not worried. Sam'll be fine. And so will he. Relief breaks open inside his chest, dizzying him. Sam was wrong, and he'll have to see that now. They've got water, he's got his survival skills back in working order, and come tomorrow they'll put some decent mileage on the actual road behind them. Find a store or something or break into a house and supply up good.

It'll all be okay.

He watches Sam try to get to his feet, chuckling at his uncoordinated attempts. Sam glares at him, promising a slow, painful death -- if only looks could kill. 

"I like your ring."

"Sam, quit screwing around."

"I like your ring."

"Sam!"

"What?" Sam scowls at him. 

"You like the ring." Dean shifts uncomfortably. He's so not ready to tell that story now. "Great, me too. Quit hassling me about it."

Sam makes a face. "I wasn't."

"But you -- you just said --"

Sam's grimace fades. "Dean, I didn't say anything."

Cold lips touch Dean's ear; cold breath, not warm, chills his skin. " _I like your ring,_ " a woman's voice whispers. 

A faint jingle sounds at his side. He looks -- he can't not -- and doesn't see it at first. But Sam, reaching out of the water, does. He snatches at the debris and holds his handful up to Dean, pale and scared. "Dean?"

In Sam's hand, Dean sees:

Three maple leaves. Two acorns.

One silver dime with a hole in it.

Cold lips press briefly to Dean's temple and brush over his ear as the wind sighs his name.


	6. Chapter 6

Frozen on the creek bank, rooted strongly as a tree in the rocky soil and thick mounds of dead leaves, Dean doesn't move. Fingers made of cold air caress his cheek, tickling at the back of his neck. Whispers float over his face, punctuated by the brushes of icy lips. A hand that isn't flesh, just mountain ice, cups his head.

The wind laughs, soft and low, and murmurs promises he can't understand in his ear.

"Dean!" 

_Ow._ A sudden, sharp pain drags his sluggish gaze down to -- to --

Sam. He's still sprawled out below Dean in the creek, his hand clutching the top of Dean's boot and hanging on. The pinch he gave Dean stings deep in the muscle of his ankle. When Dean looks at his brother, he can see white space all around Sam's irises. 

Dean swallows, tries to breathe, and almost fails. "What's happening?"

Dean can only stare at him, weirdly negative in the moonlight, outlined in white instead of black. Sam's climbing out of the creek, moving carefully and slowly while scanning the water, the almost impenetrable blackness of the trees Dean knows are behind him, and Dean himself. 

"Something's wrong, isn't it?" Sam asks, his voice cracking, one part whistle tenor and one part scary deep bass.

Dean wants to laugh. Sam can't see what Dean sees. Where before he was soaked with creek water, the liquid's frosted over in a rime on his skin. There are icicles in his hair, covering his head with fragile spears. 

_You could break those_ , the wind shapes words for him. _You could break his neck, too. So easy._

 _Get the fuck out of my head_ , he thinks, losing the ability to breathe.

The air's laughter tickles his eyes from the inside. _No._

He's back with it. Though he can barely move his lips, he tries to command Sam's attention with his stare -- he can't do it like Dad does, but he tries -- and order on a rasp of a breath, "Sam, _run_."

"But Dean --" Sam shakes himself. "Not without you."

 _Goddamnit, Sam, why do you always have to be so stubborn?_ "Please, go," Dean begs, slurring the words over his immobile tongue. He's so cold. Weariness washes over him, dragging him down with limbs made of lead. Sleep. It'd be so good to fall asleep. 

The ring on his fingers burns in a a circle of frost, the cold searing his flesh; the wind sounds like Mary when it tingles over his throat. _Get some rest, and everything'll be okay in the morning…_

He closes his eyes, fading out on the sound of Sam's bare feet crunching over the decayed brown crumbles of ancient leaves. _Tired…_

The force of the blow knocks Dean's head to one side and startles his eyes open, his vision blurred out of focus. He blinks and sees Sammy in front of him, hand raised to hit him again. "I'm not leaving you." Sam shakes with fear and his chin is up, determined as hell. "And you're not leaving me."

The wind hisses in Dean's ear, sharp and annoyed --

\-- and lets go of him. _Lets go._ He can move. He stumbles backward, feet sinking in mulch, frost melting and dripping away in thin rivulets.

Sam grabs Dean's arm with one hand and his discarded shoes with the other. "Okay. Now we can run."

***

The skinny tips of branches lash Dean as he runs. The hard knots of cockleburs bruise the soles of his feet even through his boots. Whistling noises like cracking whips warn him too late about lashing thorns about to sink into his shins.

Behind him, Sam curses and stumbles. He's still barefooted. 

He pushes Dean hard between his shoulder blades, landing a lucky blow in the now total blackness of the forest. "Keep moving! Don't stop!"

Dean hadn't realized he'd halted before Sam crashes against him. "You --"

"I'm fine, I'm right behind you, _go_!" Sam pushes him again, and he can run again. 

Up. He thinks they're going up, though he can't tell. He keeps his arms stretched in front of him, trying to feel out the trees before he hits them; he tears free of the thorns, kicks away the painful rocks he steps on, and though his chest is burning and blood is running sticky-hot down his forehead, he keeps going. He knows Sam is behind him. He can hear Sam breathing.

The forest doesn't seem to have an end, like they're running in place or maybe in circles. Like it's alive and doesn't want to let them go. 

_Mine_. The cold wind licks at Dean's ear, a tooth sharp as a fang made of ice piercing his earlobe. _Don't fight._

Dean's heart freezes behind his ribs, each wrenching attempt to beat a torture, and all he wants is to stop. To dig a deep hole in the leaves and crawl underneath. He could melt into the earth. Rest.

Sam yanks his hair, hard. The pain shocks him awake. He keeps running.

"Where --" he says, struggling to focus. It's hard to breathe. "I don't know which way --"

Sam swallows, a nasty, thick sound. "I think I do."

He pushes Dean forward. Dean stumbles through the interlaced branches of two pine trees, and falls to his knees on the blanket of needles surrounding the shelter. 

***

He doesn't have time to adjust to the return of the moonlight, pitiful as it is. It seems almost too bright to him at first, making him squint. He can follow sounds, though, and he thinks when he chances a look that Sam's in front of him.

It's definitely Sam yanking on the collar of his flannel shirt, damn near choking him. "Do I have to hit you again? Keep going!"

Dean's _tired_ , but he keeps his mouth shut and gets up. Pine needles cling to his knees in a bristly coat that won't brush off. He follows the sound of Sam's breathing, both of them running toward the shelter. One foot after the other on legs that don't want to support his weight.

Dean stops again when he bangs his foot on one leg of the picnic table. He swears quietly, chokes it down, and tries to figure out what Sam's doing. Canvas rustles and tin clatters; the noises don't make sense. "What are you --"

"The knife, Dean -- you said you had a knife -- I can't find --"

"Wait, wait." Dean fumbles, manages to catch Sam's hands -- with the roof of the shelter above them it's about as dark in here as it was in the woods -- and pushes them out of the way. He takes a deep breath, trying to center himself, and reaches for the cylindrical bag with the knife, feeling out its shape. 

The knife is in a hidden pocket on the side. He put it there earlier for safekeeping. He knows he did. Stupid, stupid, should have kept it on him --

He finds the zippered compartment and jerks it open, digging inside. 

Cold wind washes over him, prickling icy on his scalp. He thinks he hears laughter, small drops of it as empty as the holes through those damn coins, and as hard as the silver.

"Hurry," Sam warns. He presses tightly to Dean's side, clinging too tight. "Hurry!"

If only he had a light. If he had matches and a lantern or a lighter and some accelerant or even some candles and _damn you, Dad, why'd you do this to us?_

His fingers close around the hilt of the knife, the metallic tang of refined iron strong in his nose.

" _Dean._ " Sam bites back a yelp, like he's been bitten.

Dean turns, knife in his hand, blade out, arm pulled back ready to strike --

The wind blows in reverse, as if the forest is drawing in a mouthful of air, the vacuum strong enough to tug at his clothes. Icy fingers pick at his hand briefly before hissing frigidly over his lips.

And then it's gone. Whatever it was. Black clouds drift away from the moon, the light only just bright enough to reflect off Sam's wide, terrified eyes, to see the emptiness of the shelter, and to watch the trees rustle into stillness.

Sam's teeth are white shadows when he bares them in a shaky smile. "You did it, Dean. You did it."

Dean tucks the knife behind him, in his belt, and grabs Sam to him, crushing him tight. Sam shudders and wraps Dean in an equal stranglehold. They breathe, sucking in huge gasps of ordinary-cold mountain air.

He knows he's gotta be at least as disgusting as Sam is, maybe more so since Sam was in the water, or less, because he wasn't; he's got to be just as sticky with smeared sweat and trickling blood, as ripe-smelling from running, choking his throat with the stink of old-growth moss and dead wood, and as shocky pale as skim milk.

He doesn't care. They're alive.

He shoves his face hard into Sam's shoulder, locks his fingers behind Sam's back, and refuses to let go.


	7. Chapter 7

Dean isn't sure how long he and Sam stand together in the darkness, not moving, not letting go. The splintery side of the picnic table digs into his hip and chafes raw; normally, he'd push away at the first bite of pain but right now, he couldn't care less. He doesn't let go until his arms start to go numb and no matter how much he needs the reassurance, he needs to get a deep breath even more. 

Sam shuffles his feet, obviously embarrassed. To spare him the humiliation, Dean knuckles the top of Sam's head. Sam laughs, more like a hiccup, and elbows Dean in the soft meat of his stomach. 

"C'mere." Dean nudges Sam backward. "Layer up in whatever you can get your hands on. Think we can turn the table over for a windbreak?"

He hears Sam trying. "I think it's bolted to the concrete."

 _Damn._ Dean knows gotta be something else he can do, but… it's so hard to _think_. His head hurts like a bitch. "We'll keep as warm as we can, then," he says, frustrated. "Sit on the table and take watch. Wait for morning before we do anything else."

He and Sam pile on all the T-shirts and sweatshirts they can find in the dark and sit on the tabletop, plant their feet square on the bench, and settle down side by side. Their hips and elbows bump. Dean doesn't try to move away. In the dark, all he has is sensation and sound, and he's okay with girly clinginess if that means he knows exactly where Sam is at all times. Besides, even with the extra layers it's cold as a witch's tit and the body heat helps.

Sam doesn't move either.

"Thirsty?" Dean asks after an hour of watching the moon move across the sky.

"Yeah." Sam fumbles around in the dark and misses a time or three before he locates one of their remaining bottles of water water. He uncaps it and nudges Dean's hand to offer him the first sip.

Dean drinks and passes it back. He and Sam share the tepid water between one another, breathe in the smells of pine and sweat, of blood and dirt, and wait until the sky _finally_ lightens from black to dingy gray with a red sun hidden behind thick clouds and Dean can see the world again.

It's not pretty.

Dean cringes when he gets a look at the shelter by the bleak, gray light of morning. The wood's old, weathered gray, splinters everywhere, the concrete platform covered in cracks with weeds growing through them, and it's all layered thick with grime. The trees at the forest's edge stand so densely packed together he's amazed he ever managed to set foot in there at all. The sunlight doesn't do dick against the cold, the wind still chill-cutting Dean deep.

Sam looks like he's been dragged backwards through a tangle of thorns. Filthy, smeared with red Carolina mud, dried blood crusted down his cheek and gummed up on his eyelashes, old sweat stiff in his hair. 

Dean makes a face. "Gross."

Sam wrinkles his nose. "You don't look so great yourself."

"What are you talking about? I'm always gorgeous." Dean considers the amount of blood that decorates Sam's face and thinks there's not enough for any serious injuries, not that Sam would be this with it if there was, but… no sense in taking a chance. "Bend your head down, would you?"

Sam drops his head, his shoulders stiff with indignation. "I can take care of myself."

Dean remembers how teenage attitude makes a guy stupid that way, but he still wants to pop Sam one for that. "Sure you can," he says instead. "Let me know how looking at the top of your own head without a mirror works out for you."

Sam glares up at Dean through his bangs. "Jerk."

"Yeah, yeah, whatever." Dean runs his fingers through Sam's hair, lifting sections to check for scalp lacerations. There's a decent-sized scratch right above his forehead, already clotted. Probably from a thorn. 

"Ow!"

"Sit still, would you?" Dean frowns at the small wound. "I don't guess it needs stitches. Scalp wounds bleed like fuck, that's all."

"Man, if Dad ever found out you talk that way when he's not around to hear…"

"Dad's not here, is he?" Dean replies shortly.

Sam falls silent and glares at his feet. Dean keeps his own mouth shut and gets on with the job of making sure Sam's okay.

"You should live," Dean decides at last as he sits back. "You feel sick to your stomach or dizzy or anything?"

"I didn't hit my head. Did you?"

"Funny." 

"I was being serious." Sam frowns at him. "There's blood under your ear. I didn't see it until you turned your head just now."

 _I like your ring._

Dean almost flinches, _almost_ , as he remembers the bitter coldness of the bodiless voice in his head. No wonder he's got blood under his ear. "It's fine. Nothing else wrong?"

"Same as me, I guess. Nothing looks like it needs stitches."

"Damn." Humor rises in Dean's chest, the lightness of it unexpected but a relief. "Better luck next time."

"That's not funny." Sam glares at Dean. 

"Hey, the ladies love a good scar on a guy. Makes him look dangerous." Dean sticks his tongue out and waggles it at Sam.

"What's _wrong_ with you?" Sam looks honest to God offended. He kicks Dean in the ankle. Hard.

"Okay! Jeez. Just a joke." 

Sam huffs and turns away, pissy.

"What's your problem?" Dean asks, exasperated. "Lighten up."

"Yeah, 'cause that's really what we need right now. A laugh track." Sam fidgets.   
"My legs hurt. Give me the aspirin, would you?"

Dean gives up. Kid never did have a sense of humor. He finds the bottle loose in the bag, jumbled up with their spare T-shirts, and pries open the cap. "Only two for now," he warns, passing them to Sam. "We need to conserve the rest."

Sam nods and takes the pills, tossing them back with the next to last swig of water in their shared bottle. As he swallows he hitches closer to Dean. Might have been accidental, might not have been; either way Sam ends up pressed to Dean's side. Sam's face turns faintly red, but he doesn't move away.

Dean's careful not to force eye contact. He gets that Sam needs the touch. All the same he fidgets briefly, not used to this. "You need another aspirin?"

"No."

"One of those horse-sized vitamins?"

"Potassium for leg cramps has no basis in scientific fact, Dean."

"Neither does anything else we deal with on an average day. Humor me." Dean reaches back into the duffel, feeling around for the flimsy plastic bag with the pills.

His hand closes around a small square box.

"What the…" Mystified, Dean tugs the box free of the bag. Small, cardboard, no markings. When he flips the lid open, he sees alcohol wipes, more band-aids, suture thread, a needle…

The weight of Sam's stare almost burns a hole through Dean. Dean shrugs, irritable and confused. "Don't look at me. I've got no clue either."

"It wasn't there before." Sam tries to grab the box. "I know it wasn't."

Baffled, Dean does a hasty dig through the rest of the bag. A canvas pouch flops out of the leg of a pair of sweatpants and thumps heavy in his palm. He knows what it is before he looks to be sure. Salt.

What the _fuck_.

Sam takes the bag from Dean, weighing it in his hand. "It's heavy. There's a lot of it. We couldn't have missed this. How --"

Dean scratches the top of his head, cranky. His fingernails scrape too hard and he hisses with aggravated pain. "Shit!" He wipes his hand on his leg. "I don't know, Sam. It wasn't there, now it is, and that can't be. What's real can't disappear and reappear."

"What about the coins? The one that fell by your foot at the creek. Whatever's out there moved it around. Why couldn't it --"

"She," Dean interrupts. "It was a she. I heard her voice."

Sam pauses to take that in. "Okay. She moved the coins. I bet that's why I keep finding them everywhere. So why couldn't she have hidden the salt?"

"Because it's salt, asshat. It'd repel her, whatever she is. She couldn't touch salt. And she can't move the coins, either. They're silver. Silver repels the supernatural."

"So how'd that one get there, Dean? Federal Express? Wait." Sam sits up straight. "What if she didn't actually drop it? What if we saw it then because she wanted us to? And --"

Dean's stomach sinks. "-- and we didn't see the supplies because she didn't want us to."

"Which means --"

"She's messing with our heads. Like a cat on a mouse." Dean's headache returns with a vengeance. "Probably has been since we first got here." _Bitch!_ He squeezes his eyes shut, frustrated as hell. "Sam, that walk down to the creek last night. How long do you think it took?"

"Five minutes, maybe? Less than ten."

"It was way longer for me," Dean says, grim. "And on the way back?"

"Less. Like seconds. Like we were flying."

"More like crawling for me. You didn't hear her at all? Anything she said?"

Sam shakes his head silently. 

"Great. Guess I'm her favorite toy. Thanks for nothing!" Dean yelled at the forest. Now that he understands, all kinds of stuff floods back in his head. She took so much, almost everything he needed to know to survive out here, and left him as helpless as possible. Easy pickings. Sam, too. 

Sam pokes Dean's knee. "But we're better now," he says like he's not sure. "Maybe it was the knife itself, or just fighting back. She lost her grip --"

"For now. What if it doesn't last? What if she finds another way to get in and next thing we don't think we have any water, or if I suddenly think you're a monster?"

Sam's quiet for a long moment. "She's hunting us, isn't she?" 

Dean takes the salt back and wraps the pouch's drawstring ties around his wrist and tying a sturdy knot. "Looks that way."

"Why?"

"No idea. Yet." Dean pushes off the picnic table and stands, shaking out the prickles of pins-and-needles in his feet. "But you know what? Fine. Turnabout's fair play and payback's a bitch. Gonna give her a taste of her own medicine."

Sam lifts his chin. "Good. Soon as we're done here, we'll go after her." 

It makes Dean uneasy, somehow, the way Sam sounds a hell of a lot like Dad when he says that. "Look who wants to be a real hunter all of a sudden, huh?" he tries to joke.

Sam stares at Dean instead of laughing or scoffing and won't look away until Dean warily meets his eyes. "She hurt you," Sam says. He shrugs. "She doesn't get to get away with that." 

"Um." Dean's not used to being the single focus of Sam's attention, and isn't sure he likes it. Seems… dangerous, somehow. Too _much_.

He tries to shake off his nerves and wrestle some thinking time by offering, "Let me get you cleaned up first. We've got alcohol; might as well use it, huh?"

"Too bad there isn't any we can drink." Sam tilts his head to give Dean better access with the first aid kit. "Wonder if we missed anything else?"

"Let's find out." Dean tosses the bag in Sam's lap. "Go to town."

Sam grins at Dean, bright like the sun isn't, and dives in. "I won't let her get us again," he says almost casually as he rummages. He looks up at Dean, trying to make sure Dean understands how serious he is. "I promise."

It's a good thought. It is.

Dean wishes to God he could believe it, but he knows better. They don't know what she is or what she's got planned next or how to fight her. If she'll screw with his head and win, make him do something crazy or even hurt Sam.

He can't trust himself. That scares him more than anything.


	8. Chapter 8

By the time the hands on Dean's watch tick past noon -- though you couldn't prove it by him and what his senses are telling him; it's as dim, cold and windy as sunset -- he and Sam have gone through everything, shaking out all the clothes and turning their duffels inside out to hunt for hidden pockets.

Together, he and Sam only find two more things they missed before. Sam discovers a cheap plastic lighter, blue, in an outside pocket on the clothes bag. Dean turns over all the MRE's and stumbles across a short, slim knife duct taped to the back of one. Iron. It's no Arkansas toothpick -- it's almost delicate -- but he'll take whatever he can get; at least he and Sam both have a knife now. And they're sharp; when Dean tests their edges on his thumb it splits the first layer of skin easy as breathing. 

Dean _knows_ there's something more than coincidence to the fact that they're both iron, but no matter how long he and Sam stare at the blades and Dean tries to think, it doesn't come to him. Pisses him off. How can he tell if he's just forgotten or if this is the "whatever" digging in his head again?

He _can't_ tell. _Man, that bitch is going down **extra** hard when I get my hands on her._

"Doesn't look like much," Sam says as he pokes the lighter with his forefinger, spinning it around on the tabletop where they've laid everything out together to take stock.

"Nope. Could make all the difference, though. Quit playing." Dean smacks the back of Sam's wrist.

"Ow," Sam sulks, glaring at him.

"Wuss," Dean replies, smirking. He hopes if he annoys Sam enough, Sam won't stop to worry about how the two of them are gonna remember to actually use their weapons when she comes after them next. She could make them forget again, or turn the blades on themselves. Though he has a weird, itchy surety in the back of his head that she wouldn't let it be that simple. From what Dean's seen, she likes to play and no way she'd finish them before she got every last one of her rocks off. 

"You ready?" Dean asks. He stomps his boots on the cracked concrete of the shelter to make sure they're tied good and tight and won't give on him when he needs them, say when running to save his ass or Sam's. He doesn't like this, what they've decided to do. He'd love to figure out a way to escape a hike right back into the ghost's stomping grounds, but he and Sam need more water to go on. That's just facts. And the only water the two of them have access to is down at the creek in the woods. That's facts, too.

Facts _suck_ sometimes.

Dean checks the water bottles he's tied to his forearms with some strips ripped off a T-shirt, and makes sure the one Sam carries is stuffed securely in his hip pocket. "Sam?" he repeats. "You with me?"

Sam lifts his head, breathing in quickly, making Dean think Sam might have fallen asleep on his feet for a second. Sam blinks and shakes his head. Jeez, he looks awful, dark circles under his eyes, his skin pale gray with fatigue. 

"You ready?" Dean pushes. They can't afford to make exhausted mistakes. They have to be sharp.

Sam rubs his forehead, scrunching his eyes closed tight as if in pain. He shakes it off, straightens, and looks square at Dean. "Let's go."

Dean nods, impressed at how Sam's manned up so far. Dad would be proud --

Screw that. _Dean's_ proud.

Dean takes the lead on this trip through the trees, and Sam follows. The trek's quiet at first, the only conversation between Dean and his brother a silent code made of hand gestures and subtle changes in expression. 

_Careful_ , Dean warns when Sam almost stumbles back and almost cracks his head on a low branch.

 _Take it easy, I've got you,_ he tells Sam when Sam's jeans snag on some nasty-ass briars and he's in danger of ripping open both denim and flesh. Dean pauses long enough to help work him free.

When Sam trips over a root and Dean has to catch him before he faceplants in the old moss on the forest floor, Dean does have a second in which he'd like to roll his eyes to the sky and ask _"why me?"_ , but it passes when Sam takes his hand and flashes him a grateful if embarrassed as hell half-smile. 

_It's okay,_ he mouths to Sam, who then startles Dean stupid for a second with a quick squeeze of Dean's fingers before he walks ahead, fast, his head up and his cheeks red.

Sam's teenage clumsiness aside, the actual walk down to the creek and the creek itself is almost disappointing and pretty anti-climatic. The forest looks like an ordinary forest, nothing but close-growing trees and a bunch of nature crap to trip over, weeds and slick moss and dead leaves and pine needles and red-tipped thorns, plenty dangerous all on its own with no supernatural help needed but nothing he and Sam can't handle. 

By Dean's watch, he sees that it takes about five minutes to reach the creek, a one hundred percent ordinary-looking thin stream of water cutting its own channel through the clay. Five minutes almost exactly, even with all the accidents along the way, no less and no more than it should take with a clear head.

"Looks okay," Sam says. Without waiting for the go-ahead he sinks to one knee on the red dirt of the creek's edge and plunges his open bottle in the clear, clean water. The _glug, glug_ as the bottle fills reminds Dean of how thirsty he is, his throat sore and dry, but… something's not right.

Dean fights for the memory. "Wait," he says slowly. "Sam, we can't drink it."

"What?" Sam stares at him like he's confused and betrayed at the same time. "Why?"

"Because of… bacteria." The right word is a relief to hear when it falls off Dean's tongue. "Parasites."

Sam's face falls. He doesn't take the bottle out of the water, though, just frowns at it until a slow light of comprehension dawns over him. "I think I know how to take care of it," he says.

"Wanna share with the rest of the class?" Dean manfully resists the urge to pat Sammy on the back for using his head.

"We boil it."

Okay, the urge to praise Sam has passed. "Boil it in what, genius?" Dean fights back a yawn, irritated at his body's betrayal. So he's tired too. So what? 

Sam points at some skinny trees on the opposite side of the creek. "We make a container out of bark, rig up a -- a thing like a spit -- and boil the water over a campfire."

Huh. "Not bad," Dean says. He hands Sam both his bottles. "Fill 'er up."

A slight movement in the corner of his eye draws Dean's attention. Crap. One boot lace came loose. Gotta fix that. He doesn't want to sit on the ground -- too hard getting up fast if he needs to -- but when he takes a quick scan around there's a fallen tree decently close by. "While you do that I'm gonna take a load off for a sec and tie my boot, 'kay?"

"Sure. Don't fall asleep."

"Like I would," Dean grumbles. Damn, it's good to sit down, even if the fallen tree is cold and uncomfortable. He misses the tight, shiny seats of the Impala so effing much, down to the way any bare skin sticks to them on hot days and how they take forever to warm up when it's cold.

Dean crosses his arms, then props his elbow on his knee and his chin in his hand and watches Sam as he finishes filling the bottles and noses around for the "right kind of bark". _Damn proud of you, baby brother,_ he thinks drowsily. _You're gonna be a good man. Good hunter, too. Long as we both keep our heads, we're golden…_

He blinks, vision blurring briefly out of focus, and rubs at his temples, trying to shake off the aggravating dull ache behind his forehead. 

"Hey. Dean." Sam's suddenly there, kneeling by Dean's side. "Here, drink this."

Dean's confused. They just had that whole talk about boiling, right? He still takes the bottle Sam offers him, and nearly drops it from surprise when it's warm to the touch. Huh? He sniffs the cold air and growls when he detects the tang of wood smoke.

"God _dammit_. Why'd you let me fall asleep?" Dean uncaps the bottle and takes a deep swig. Tastes like nothing, mostly, except _flat_ and _nasty_. "I ought to kick your ass for starting a fire down here. What are you, nuts?"

"I didn't _let_ you do anything." Sam uncaps a bottle for himself and swigs. He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. "You started snoring all on your own. I watched out for you the whole time. And I was careful about the fire. We're safe."

Dean blinks again, and when he tries to focus, there's been another shift. Sam's taken the bottle from him, planting it between Dean's boots. "Hey." Sam jostles Dean's knee. "Chill out, would you? Close your eyes for a minute if you want. I think I remember how to make some bark containers so we can carry more water with us."

Sounds _awesome_. Dean starts to let his eyes close, though he frowns as they drift shut. Sam telling him to rest doesn't make sense -- if Sam tried to doze off, especially _here_ , Dean would…

" _Sleep_ ," Sam insists, his big hand abruptly _there_ and warm over Dean's face, covering his eyes. 

"Shouldn't," Dean mumbles even as the world starts to fade away into peaceful nothingness.

"You want me to sing you a lullaby to convince you I'm serious? I swear, Dean, it's okay. I've got your back."

"Don't sing," Dean says on a yawn. "Rather not scare the birds." He tries to recover. "Sam, I shouldn't. Bad idea."

"Would you shut up and let me take care of you for once?"

"Other way around. My job to look after you."

"Live and learn. Here. Does this make you happy? I'm right beside you." Sam sits heavily by Dean, jostling the branch. Huh. That's kind of nice. Sam's body is long and solid enough that even though he's skinny he doesn't make a half-bad wind break. He's warm, too, like a living blanket. Seems to Dean like he's been cold for fucking ever. So good to be warm again.

Sam makes good on his threat and starts to hum. _Black Sabbath_. Dean chuckles under his breath and lets his head fall to rest on Sam's shoulder because it's there and it's surprisingly comfortable.

He remembers how Mom used to sound way, way back when, singing to him when he couldn't get to sleep or baby Sam had pissed him off. She never could remember the words to anything but she loved music, and she'd sing scraps of lyrics and hum the melody. She'd rock him on her lap and he'd be so warm, so safe that nothing in the world could ever scare him.

Dean can almost hear her voice right now, off-key and sweet and so _Mom_ that his body relaxes, goes limp. 

He thinks he hears Sam call his name, " _Dean!_ " like something's wrong, but he shoves that away so he can remember Mom better, so he can relive the way she kissed his forehead when she tucked him in and listen to her singing _down in the valley, valley so low, hang your head over, hear the wind blow_ , sweet and pure as silver bells…


	9. Chapter 9

"Damn," Dean says on the tail end of a yawn, smacking his lips in appreciation. It's a good day to be alive. Friggin' gorgeous out here.

He yawns again and scratches his chest -- that was an awesome nap -- and stretches his arms above his head, grabbing one wrist to really work the muscle. When he looks up he has to shade his eyes. The sun's bright today like he's hardly ever seen it before. Almost hurts, and he knows he'll burn like someone set a match to him, but on a day like this, who cares? He's warm, golden light surrounding him. Cicadas and grasshoppers sing in fantastic disharmony by the side of the road. 

The road stretches out in front of him for miles. Dean can see the path so clear and easy, a dirt road going up one hill and down another, over rocks and under trees, as if someone laid it out just for him to walk on.

"Not bad, Sam, huh?"

Sam doesn't say anything. Probably sulking. Sammy hates hikes.

The grasshoppers kick it up a notch, their chirping falling into… Dean cocks his head. Weird. It's more than just plain racket now; the noise almost sounds familiar. Almost like a song. 

Dean nods in time, trying to catch the melody -- _down in the valley, valley so… something, something…_ \-- but as soon as he starts to get the tune, the notes clatter apart and it's just a big mess of croaking again.

 _Eh. No big deal._

"C'mon, Sam. Let's make tracks. Hurry it up." Dean snaps his fingers, knowing Sam's tagging behind with a face like he's sucking lemons. "We got a long way to go. Sooner we start, sooner we get there. _Ow!_ " 

Dean grabs for a sudden, sharp point of pain on the back of his calf. Hurts like Sam kicked a rock at him or something. When he touches the sore spot, his fingers come away smeared with a drop of red. "What'd you do that for?"

The grasshoppers' droning rises in volume, answering Dean instead of Sam. Louder and louder and louder until Dean has to press his hands to his ears. He screws his eyes shut too, the sun way too bright now. Nature just turned it up to eleven and it's nowhere near as good as it was a second ago.

"Jesus Christ!" he mutters, seriously pissed off. "What's going --"

Icy rain pelts his skin. The sky goes dark. 

"Sam?" Dean turns around in a circle, confused. He doesn't see Sam anywhere. 

_Wait. Where'd the road go?_

Someone laughs behind him. Not Sam. A girl, or a woman, her giggle light and clear.

"Who's there?" Dean wraps his arms around his chest. The cold rain batters his skin. His teeth chatter; he clenches them together and tries to stop shaking. "Sam! Where are you?"

A flash of -- something -- dark as night whips past. Dean only gets a half-second's glimpse out of the corner of his eye, but no way does he ignore something like that, so he turns and --

Snowflakes drift to the ground in front of him. Huge, fluffy, white, the kind Dean's only ever seen on TV. They're too big to be real. Fascinated, Dean starts to crouch to scoop up a handful and get a better look.

_No. Wait._

Dean stands, trying to see through the snow. The flakes fall faster now, thicker, whiting out everything around him. He's got no idea where he is. Hell, he can't even sense the road under his feet. As far as Dean can tell, he's standing on thin air, or in the middle of a cloud.

He can't see Sam. Not anywhere.

"Sam!" Dean throws his head back and lets the shout rip. Who knows what might be out here but he can't find his brother and he's not gonna mess around if Sam's lost --

"Shh." Cold air presses itself to Dean's lips. Cold air shaped like two fingers. "Hush, little baby. Don't say a word."

Dean's head fills in the rest of it automatically, remembering when he had to get Sam to sleep this way, before he got too old for it. _Daddy's gonna buy you a mockingbird._

He understands now. This isn't real. This is all _her_. Whatever she is.

"So what, you think you're real smart now?" he demands despite the press of icy fingers over his lips. He can't see anything at all anymore, least of all her, which is just fucking great and pisses him off. "What are you? Where's Sam?"

"Shhh," she croons. 

She pushes harder on his mouth. His air supply drops; he can barely breathe around her touch. Dean swallows, tries to ignore the nasty sensation that he's forcing down an ice cube instead of spit, and forces out the demand, "Tell me where Sam is."

"Don't fuss," she sing-songs, drifting off on whatever sea of crazy her head's filled with. "If you're good, they'll let us out. You'll see."

 _Screw that crazy talk._ Dean draws his lips back over his teeth and snaps at the sense of solid, freezing air trying to shut him up.

She laughs again, sweet as a babbling brook. That worries Dean. The supernatural things out there are bad, and crazy is bad. Put 'em both together, and that's as nasty as it gets.

"What do you want?"

"Dance with me." Freezing hands grasp Dean's.

 _Yeah, I don't think so._ Dean pulls away.

Whatever she is, she doesn't like that. She hisses, steam kettle loud. The snow clears for a second, long enough for Dean to catch a glimpse of silver. A coin, lying at his feet. A dime with a hole in it. 

Dean starts to bend, to reach for the dime. 

"Don't," she shrills. "That's not your business."

"Oh, yeah? Guess I'll make it my business." The snow kicks back up, but Dean remembers well enough and reaches out to --

Five spears of cold burn their way across his cheek. Dean rocks back on his heels, almost thrown off balance. "Did you just slap me?" he asks, amazed. 

"Don’t. Touch!"

"Since you asked politely… nah, screw you." Dean grabs for the coin.

The snow disappears. Everything disappears except _cold_ and _wet_ and _empty_. Dean looks down, looks around, and sees jack. 

Doesn't matter. He's got the coin, he knows he does, felt the roundness of it freezing his palm --

Dean opens his hand, and it's empty. 

"You can't cross the bridge unless you pay the toll," she says from somewhere above him, over his head. "You can't pay the toll if you don't have any money. Those aren't for you." Hummingbird wisps of cold fog brush through Dean's hair and under his chin. "Hush, now, hush." A feather of chill traces his ring finger. "So pretty."

Dean grits his teeth.

She giggles. "It's just a game. Don't be scared, love. Be a good boy." Chilly wind tickles the back of Dean's neck. "We're only playing, same as last night. Don't you remember?"

 _Shit._ Dean's skin prickles with goosebumps. "I don't care what you do to me. Okay? I don't. I'm not scared. Just tell me where Sam is." His temper frays when she doesn't answer. "If you've hurt one hair on his head I swear I'll --"

Black eyes snap into focus in front of his. Barely two inches away. Huge, dark irises, the thinnest ring of amber brown around them, wide, white sclera. 

Dean freezes, the breath locking up in his lungs. _What the…_

The eyes disappear. "Stay with me."

"No." An idea, more like the spark of a hint of one, crackles sluggishly in Dean's head. "Get out of the way."

She shrieks, frozen air spreading wide in icy wings, but he's already pushed through and --

And he touches down on the forest floor. Next to the creek. It's mid-afternoon, judging by the weak-ass light. 

"Sam?"

The black wisp flashes past in Dean's peripheral vision. He tracks it automatically.

It lands on Sam. Sam, on his knees in the dirt next to a fallen tree where --

"You let me go," Dean snarls, his throat working hard around the frozen knots in it. "Sam! Don’t you hurt him!"

Sam barely blinks as he stares at Dean's body, slack with sleep on the log. Dean sees that his body's leg is smeared with blood. He traces that back to the smaller knife clutched tight in Sam's hand. Sam draws the blade sideways, light as light could be, only just barely breaking the skin.

A matching pain scores through Dean where he stands away from Sam and his sleeping body. _Hot **damn**_. Sam figured it out. Sam knows she's got Dean's head. Pain's what snapped Dean out of it before. Sam remembered. He's fighting for both of them, trying to wake Dean up. Not quitting. 

"Attaboy," Dean breathes, though he's so damn proud he could yell. "Good for you. Keep working at her, Sam. You're --" 

"You're misbehaving," she snaps in his ear. "You know what happens to bad boys."

A wisp swirls over Sam, like black smoke, growing faster than Dean's heartbeat. 

"Bad boys don't get to play with grown-up's toys," she sings.

The dark eyes Dean saw before snap open and stare at him through the shadows. They disappear just as fast. 

Frigid air hurts Dean's ear when she whispers, over the cartilage, "Now. Be _good._ "


	10. Chapter 10

She's got Sam, so the way Dean sees it, he doesn't have a choice but to obey. He freezes, locking in place the way Dad taught him, standing to attention. 

"Good job, son," she praises him -- but not with her voice, the whispery tattered-at-the-edges alto he's already used to.

Dean draws a quick, shallow breath. This isn't real. He _knows_ it can't be happening, but he'd swear on his life he hears Dad behind him and not the woman hunting them. Dean can almost sense Dad's presence and warmth. The slippery smell of gun oil and the mellowness of old leather fill his nose.

It's a trick. Dean forces himself to remember that. She's messing with his head, going deeper. 

But it's so real that Dean's tempted to turn around, or even to flick his gaze to the side to see for himself if Dad's there -- even if it is a trick, damn, he wants to see Dad again -- Dad would know what to do --

"Don't move," Dad murmurs for Dean's ear alone.

Dean blinks…

…and when he looks again he's on eye level with a twisted saguaro, faded green mottled with dead brown spots. The air is dry, burning in his nose, and even though it's dark outside he's sluggish from the arid heat. His boots are full of sand. Dean's almost eleven years old, and he and Dad are hunting werewolf in New Mexico. 

The weight of a rifle loaded with silver shot rests heavy in Dean's hands. It's just the two of them. Uncle Bobby's watching Sam, a long way away. Days' worth of driving in Dad's car. Both Uncle Bobby _and_ Sam yelled at Dad for taking Dean along on a werewolf hunt, but Dean _wanted_ to go. 

Dad calls it a training mission. Dad brought Dean because he knew he could count on Dean. He _has_ to get this right. Show Dad he can do it. He won't let Dad down again like he did with the Striga. Not ever again.

The werewolves aren't here now, but Dad's tracked them. They'll come this way soon. 

"Keep your mouth shut when you're hunting," Dad tells him. It's dark out, but the full, white moon overhead is bright. Dean can see Dad fine, but Dad wants him to concentrate, so Dean focuses his eyes on the gun in his hands and listens carefully. "Let your brain do the work. Everything makes noise, even what you can't help, so don't give away any advantages you don't have to."

"But if I'm quiet --"

"I said everything, Dean. Even breathing. Even your heartbeat." Dad taps firmly on Dean's chest, right over his heart, prodding home the point.

"Then what difference does it make? If you're quiet and they still know you're there?" Dean licks his lips, swiping away the salt from dried-on sweat gathered during the day. Tastes gross. 

Dad sighs, but he doesn't yell. "They do. They will. Here's the thing, son. A lot of them -- not all, now -- can't see in here." Dad taps Dean's forehead. "If you keep it all inside your head and don't let your body give you away, then odds are you'll have a better chance in a fight. I'm told there are ways you can focus and calm down your heart, slow your breathing, even when you're scared. Uncle Bobby can teach you when we get back."

"Can't you show me how?" 

Dad _hmphs_. "I know what I need to know. We're not talking about me. We're talking about you, Dean. Be careful. Be ready." He readjusts Dean's grip on the rifle. "That's sloppy work, son."

Shame burns in Dean's cheeks. He doesn't show it, though. Soldiers don't whine.

"Better." Dad looks at the sky. "Should be any minute, now. You ready?"

"Yes, sir." Dean hesitates, frowning. "Dad? What if we're hunting something that _can_ read our thoughts? What do we do then?"

"One lesson at a time, Dean."

… and Dean blinks, snapping out of the dream damn well nested _inside_ his other dream. 

But did he dream that on his own, or did she make him do it? Dean doesn't know, but he thinks it'd make a lot of difference in whatever he does next if he were sure. 

Though Dean can't see the woman, he can hear her, laughing with her own voice again, happy as a kid on the last day of school. A piece of dark shadow twirls around Sam's head, making Dean think weirdly of the negative image of a candle flame. 

"That's right," she praises, cool touches feathering over Dean's cheek. The cold lingers under Dean's eye, the shape of a hand holding his face steady with air pressure.

Dean's stomach churns. He knows what this is. She's kissing him. "Get away from me."

"That's not what good little boys say," she chides, rapping air over his knuckles. "What do you say?"

"Please," Dean says, teeth gritted. 

"Much better." Invisible fingers ruffle up Dean's hair. A spiral of air twists away, blowing out the black candle over Sam's head. "So much better."

"Great. Terrific. Let me out of here."

"You can't go alone, silly." The cold air swirls behind Dean and surrounds him. He traces the waves of chilliness and understands that she's put her "arms" around his shoulders. _Hugging_ him. Jesus Christ. "You can't ever leave me."

"Yeah?" Dean tries to shrug her off. He keeps his eyes on Sam. Sam, who hasn't given up, who's prodding Dean's body's leg with the knife, drawing fresh, tiny beads of blood. "Why not? Why can't I leave you?"

She tickles Dean's chin. "Because you'll always be my little boy."

She kisses him again, and Dean understands something else that he almost wishes he didn't. She's not trying to come on to him. When this thing kisses him, it's the way a mom kisses her kid goodnight. 

And that's not hers to take. Not ever. 

"The hell with this," Dean breathes, his mouth sour with fear. He throws his weight backwards to knock her away. 

Doesn't work. She doesn't let go. The sharply cold air tightens around Dean, pinning his arms to his sides. "Behave!" she snaps, broken points -- fingernails -- digging in. "Be a good boy, sweetheart --"

Dean's stomach turns. "You think I'm your son. I'm sorry, I swear, but I'm not your son."

She hesitates. Her laugh is uncertain. "Is this a new game?"

"Lady, I'm sorry, I am, but --"

"You're not my son?" The chilly air draws back, leaving a vacuum behind it. Breath hisses from Dean's lungs, pulled out of him. " _You're not my son._ "

 _Oh, shit._ No time to think, no time to -- _shut up and move!_

Dean ducks, chest burning, a whip-crack of frozen air slashing through where his head was a split-second ago. This is bad.

But Dean's right where he wanted to be.

 _It was down here._ Dean paws through the mist, searching, searching -- _I know it was. She doesn't want me to get it? I'm gonna get it if it's the last thing I do. C'mere, you little bastard --_

The woman shrieks, ear-piercing, worse than nails on a chalkboard. 

Dean's hand closes on a cold, metallic circle. He laughs without breath, choking, and shapes his lips around the word: "Gotcha."

Her scream deafens Dean, knocks him forward on his face, presses him into cold nothingness and leaves and the stink of mulch and Sam's dragging him off the log and he's _out of there._ He's back.

"Dean? Oh God, Dean, I didn't know what to do and --" Sam drops the knife, trying to get a better grip on Dean.

"Easy, easy." Dean drags in the biggest breath he can manage, coughs hard when his chest protests, and wheezes through another. He has to blink three times to focus, but damn, what a great sight. Sam, no nasty shadows sticking to him, alive and gawky and scared shitless but as far as Dean can tell, in one piece. She didn't get her claws in him.

 _She didn't want to_ , he thinks. _Why?_

Sam helps Dean off the forest floor -- guess he must have fallen when he broke loose -- and gets him on his feet. Dean's wobbly as hell, but he's not about to let that stop him.

"Don't leave the knife," he wheezes. His calf stings like a son of a bitch. Dean hopes it scars. He'd wear those marks with pride. "Good job, Sammy."

Sam stops, like the praise startles him, then almost glows with the brightness of his smile. "Thanks."

"Yeah, well, don't let it go to your head." Dean shakes his own, trying to shed the last shreds of her nasty taint. "Let's get out of here, huh?"

"We should figure out how to take more water with us -- you -- I didn't get the chance to make any --"

"Uh-uh." Dean grabs Sam's arm and yanks him forward. "We're getting out of here _now_."

Dad would want him to stay and fight. Dean's sure of that. Would tell him not to walk away until he'd put her down, whatever she is, ghost or faerie or what-the-hell-ever.

_Screw that. Dad's not here. **I am.**_

"Sam, move!" He shoves Sam in front of him and pushes him. 

Sam digs in his heels. "Not unless I can see you."

"Fine." Dean's not wasting time arguing. He moves up to Sam's side and grabs Sam by one skinny arm. "Happy? Let's go."

Sam nods. In Dean's peripheral vision, he sees Sam bite his lip. 

"What now?" Dean starts to ask, half-turning toward Sam. Starts to ask. He doesn't get it halfway out before Sam flings those thin arms around him and hangs on tight, hard -- quick, but… holy crap.

Sam jerks away, his face bright red. 

Dean stares at him.

"Are we going or what?" Sam demands.

"Um. Yeah." The last time Sam _hugged_ Dean, Sam was eight years old. Jesus. 

Dean shakes it off. More important things to deal with right now. "Walk fast."

They move out. Dean keeps his promise and doesn't let go of Sam until they reach the shelter. 

Dean keeps his thoughts to himself as they walk, going over his memories time and time again until they're solid as fact. In his mind's eye, he has a perfect view of the road he saw laid out over hill and over rock, golden in the dream's sunshine. Dean bets it'll still be there in the foggy gray real world. 

No sense telling Sam yet. Don't need to get his hopes up in case it's nothing. Maybe, though. Just maybe.

And if it _is_ real… Dean fingers the silver coin in his pocket, cold as ice. **_If_** the road's real, maybe the toll we've got to pay is real, too… 


	11. Chapter 11

Dean shifts his weight on the picnic table. The wood creaks and pops beneath him. Bolted to the concrete or not, he's not too confident in how well it'll hold up or for how much longer.

"Hurry it up, Sam, would you?"

Sam picks through the few bits of first-aid kit they do have -- or at least those they're aware of -- as if it's a whole surgical tray instead of a handful of band-aids. "Hold on. I want to do this right."

"It's a few scratches," Dean protests. "How wrong can you go?" 

Sam's hand hovers over the suture kit.

"Whoa!" Dean flinches back. "Okay, that right there? That'd be wrong. And seriously, what's wrong with me doing this myself? Gimme a couple of alcohol swabs and I'll be fine."

"Sure. And when you develop gangrene --"

"For god's sake, Sam, that's not gonna --"

"-- and your leg falls off, don't come crying to me." To Dean's relief, Sam puts the suture kit down. "I guess they aren't that deep."

"You should know. You're the one who cut me in the first place." Dean fidgets again. He's going to end up with splinters in his ass, he knows it.

"Quit squirming." Sam tears open one of the swabs and takes Dean by his ankle. Dean guesses it's to hold him still. "Don't even start," Sam says without looking up. "If I let you go, you'll kick me in the face."

"I will not!"

Sam presses his lips tightly together and drags the alcohol swab down the center of the shallow knife cuts. Dean's leg jerks in response, a reflex, and almost pulls free.

"See?" Sam mutters. "Told you."

Dean grits his teeth and grimaces at Sam. "Just get it done."

Sam discards one stained swab and goes for another. Dean wants to warn him to ration those, too -- who knows how many they'll end up needing -- but then again, although he seriously doubts anything would turn green and fall of, neither he or Sam can afford to take the chance.

Dean hums tunelessly through his teeth and kicks his free foot, drumming his heel on the table's attached bench. 

"Almost there." Sam reaches without looking and snags the tube of antibiotic ointment. "Wish we had some gauze. The Band-Aids aren't any good for long cuts close together."

"If wishes were horsepower, Sam."

Sam snickers. Dean chuckles despite the stinging burn from the alcohol and prods Sam's knee with the tip of his boot. 

"Hey," Dean says abruptly, not really meaning to.

"Hmm?" Sam sits back, studying his work.

Dean started this, so he mans up to it. "Um. Thanks."

The corner of Sam's mouth lifts. "Yeah. Let me know next time you need someone to maim you. I think my calendar's open."

Dean laughs, startled. Sam glances briefly up to flash a grin at him, then zips back down to his work.

They sit in silence while Sam smoothes on the ointment. _Kid's got a good touch,_ Dean has to admit. _Doesn't dick around about what's got to be done, and then he makes decent work out of it. Not bad._

"So what do we do now?" Sam asks, capping the ointment.

Dean shrugs. "Get out of here, I guess. See how far we can go in a day."

"What?" Sam draws back, frowning at him.

"We've wasted too much time already." Dean flexes his ankle, testing how much his leg will protest if he needs to run or jump. _Nothing I can't handle,_ he decides. "We should get back on the road and start clocking some miles."

Sam looks away, then down. His expression sets tightly, familiar to Dean. Anger. "Huh." 

"Huh?" Dean echoes, frowning at Sam. "What, that's not enough for you?"

"No. It's not." Sam wipes his ointment-greasy fingers on his leg. "She's still down there."

"Yeah, I know, and she can stay down there for all I give a damn," Dean says, his nerves prickling. Sam better not be winding up to the argument Dean suspects he is. Sam's done great so far, sure, he's manned up like a champ, but about this decision, he's got no right to argue. Not after all the fights Sam and Dad have about hunting. 

Dean's had his moments of being angry Dad did this to them. Sure. But he can't turn away from Dad. He can't. 

He puts his foot down on the bench. "End of discussion, Sam. We're done here. Someone else can take care of her."

"You don't mean that," Sam says.

"Wanna bet?"

"Nope. You never walk away from a hunt, Dean. Not that I can ever remember."

Dean taps his boot on the bench, annoyed. "This is different, and if you've gotta ask me _how_ it's different --"

"What if I did? What would you say?" Sam addresses Dean directly, challenging him. He hardly blinks. "It's different because you have to take care of me? Watch out for me?"

"That's not fair --"

"What's fair have to do with it?" Sam tosses the ointment in the first-aid box and shuts the lid hard, crumpling the thin cardboard. "Fair wouldn't be dumping us here in the first place."

"Jesus, Sam, don't start with this --"

"Why not? What Dad did was wrong."

Dean recoils. "Don't you say that."

"Okay. Sure. Kicking both your sons out of a car in the middle of the night without enough food and water to last a week, and telling them to meet him in three months? Don't know what I was thinking. Who'd have a problem with that?"

"Damnit, Sam! It's not like we can't do what he asked. We should be able to. We're trained for it."

"Are we? Not on a road like this, we're not. Know how I know? We're still here." Sam gestures angrily at the empty road, at the deserted shelter, and at the dense forest. "Noticed anything weird about this?"

"Oh, jeez, let me think. You mean aside from the crazy ghost or what-the-fuck-ever she is?"

"Who you're planning to leave here to kill whoever she wants." Sam kneels up, invading too much of Dean's space. "No one's driven by since we've been here. That cop car was the last other human we saw, and that was miles away. If it was real. Maybe it wasn't. Maybe she made us think we saw it so she could herd us here. Maybe we're trapped and we won't get out until she's taken care of. Ever think of that?"

"Sam --"

Sam slams the flat of his hand on the table. "I'm not done!"

"With talking?" Dean jeers, hackles rising. "You never are. Flapping your lips every hour, every day." He raises the pitch of his voice, going high and girlish. "Dad, are we there yet? Dad, how much further? Dad, change the radio station, I hate this song. Dad, I'm hungry, Dad, Dad, Dad --"

"You know what?" Sam rises higher. "I am so sick of hearing about Dad. If I never saw Dad again, or heard from him, or if you never said his name again it would be way too soon."

"Don't you talk that way about him, Sam, or I swear I'll --"

"Swear you'll what?" Sam's red in the face, he's so worked up. "Take a swing at me? Send me to my room? Make me hike across -- oh, wait."

"  
Sam's balanced so precariously on the bench, and he's so loud now, shrill and insistent, and the scared buzz in Dean's head won't stop. Dean sees himself doing it, and then lets it go, kicking his brother off the bench and on his ass. 

Dean climbs off the table and stands over Sam, fists clenched. "I don't want to hear any more about this. Is that clear? Get your share of the stuff. We're leaving."

Dean turns away. He smacks the surface of the table, shoving off the debris they left behind. He's got his hand on the straps of one duffel, ready to throw it over his shoulder, when Sam, who hasn't said a word since he hit the dirt and hasn't made a move to get up, says in a voice that's low and dangerous as a snake's hiss, "Yes, sir."

Dean turns back to stare numbly at Sam as Sam gets up, rubbing his shoulder where Dean's kick landed. "What did you call me?"

Sam brushes his hair out of his eyes and looks abruptly older, sadder and meaner. "Nothing." He shoulders past Dean and reaches for a duffel. "If this is what you think's right thing to do, then fine. We're wasting daylight. Better hit the road. Start walking. Make up for lost time."

Dean doesn't know it's coming before he sees his hand, as if it belongs to someone else, snap closed around Sam's wrist. His voice is raw as an open wound. "Wait." He can't think. He doesn't know how to say this. "What do you want me to do, Sam?

Sam doesn't try to push him off. Why would he? He's got what he wanted. "I want you to be Dean. The Dean I know, he'd hunt this thing."

"But Dad said --"

"That's what I mean. I don't want to hear what Dad would say. And he's not here. You are. So I want to hear what _you_ would say. If Dad wasn't waiting for us to do the impossible. If it was just you who came across this all on your own, what would you do? If it was just me, five years or ten years from now, how pissed off would you be if I just walked away?"

Dean's silent, gritting his teeth.

Sam pushes again. He always does. Never lets anyone catch their breath. "I know what you'd do. What I want to stay here, with you, and do. Hunt her. Because she needs to be dealt with. Finished."

Dean knows it's true. But to hunt her is to turn his back on Dad. He doesn't know if he can.

And if she gets her hands on Sam. Hurts him. Maybe kills him.

God. Dean can't breathe. He doesn't want to do this. He wants to get out of here.

But Sam's right. The only choice they have is no kind of choice at all.

They can't walk across the state to meet Dad. Their responsibility to him ended when they found a hunt.

"I'm sorry," Dean says, the words escaping him out loud when he didn't mean for them to.

Sam crowds Dean from the side. "I know. For what it's worth… me too." 

Dean's not sure how much it _is_ worth, the exchange rate between brother and father and family and duty. And he can't stand here and talk to Sam about it any longer. Not without hitting him again.

Dean turns and walks away, heading for the edge of the shelter nearest to the woods. Sam lets him go, and doesn't come after him until the day starts losing its light.


	12. Chapter 12

The sun's on the verge of going down, the thick cover of gray clouds hanging heavy in the sky washing pale lavender-gray and pinkish-gray, shadows starting to thicken and lengthen, before Sam makes himself known again. Sam's kept his distance and kept his mouth shut for a good couple of hours by then, and Dean appreciates that. He does.

Dean just wishes the silence had bought him more peace than it has, which is precisely dick. All he's gotten is more worked up. His mind alternates between frantic rushes all jumbled together, wondering what he's supposed to do with this hunt, with Sam, how they're going to survive when they run out of food and water, how useful a couple of knives, some salt and a lighter are actually going to be -- not much, in Dean's opinion --

And then there are the empty moments, which maybe freak Dean out much worse. Spaces where all his thoughts go blank, flat, vacant, and he doesn't recognize the passing of time until he blinks and sees that the vague yellowness of the sun behind its shroud of clouds has jumped further across the sky. 

_Is that her messing with me?_ Dean can't forget anything Sam came out with in that fight, but one thing sticks with him after every time he comes back to himself: _what's real? What's not?_

For all that it scares Dean, though, it's better than focusing on their disobedience to Dad. It's not just Sam anymore who says he knows better. Dean's thrown in on the rebel's side, too, and even if it's done, Dean's head doesn't want to accept the reality.

 _No wonder she likes me,_ Dean thinks, scuffing up some loose gravel with the toe of his boot. His lips twitch in a humorless smile. _We're probably about equal on the "fucked up" scale._

When Dean thinks that, he grimaces, instantly guilty. He has Sam. The son she keeps looking for, he's got to be long dead.

With that thought, Dean turns to look for Sam. He knows Sam didn't go anywhere. It's like Dad said -- no matter how still you hold yourself, there's always some noise. Without consciously listening for it, Dean's heard Sam breathing, shuffling, sitting, scraping dirt off his jeans. Sam's right where Dean expects him to be, crouched at the edge of the shelter closest to the road, picking through the loose gravel. Sam's back is turned to Dean. Dean doesn't think it's out of anger. Sam's shoulders aren't stiff enough for that.

Dean makes the first move to cross the bridge of silence between he and Sam. Sort of like waving a truce flag. "What're you doing?"

Sam doesn't answer at first. He pokes a largish chip of stone, tumbles it aside, and grunts. 

"You caveman?" Dean tries to joke.

Sam looks back at Dean, shading his eyes against the setting sun even though it's barely bright enough now to be a decent nightlight in a kid's bedroom. As Dean frowns at him, confused, Sam holds up two fingers on his free hand and twiddles them back and forth. 

Metal gleams, captured in Sam's hand. Another coin. Another _goddamned_ coin, and just like that Dean's temper flares back into life. 

Why's Sam got to keep meddling? Why can't he leave well enough alone? 

"Well?" Sam's waiting for an answer. The hell.

The accusing question escapes Dean, loud and strident, "Why do you care?"

"Excuse me?" Sam cranes his head to stare back at Dean. He looks ridiculous, skinny legs and bony knees bowed out frog-style with the rest of him lanky down the middle. A grasshopper, maybe, or a cricket.

Dean turns away, watching the forest. No, not watching. Not actively looking at anything. More just letting his gaze rest there, the blurry rippling of wind through the pines a sort of white noise for his eyes.

"What did you say?" Sam presses.

"Nothing. Doesn't matter."

"Yes," Sam insists, "it does." Dean hears scuffling sounds, brushing noises; in the back of his head he puts the pieces together to equal _Sam standing up, Sam being pushy, Sam about to get in my face_ , yeah, that's about right. "Tell me."

"Forget about it," Dean warns through clenched teeth. He forces his hands to relax and swing empty at his side, not balled up ready to hit. Wonders if maybe this anger is part of _her_ influence, along with so much else.

Hell, maybe he's imagining this whole fight. Who knows?

"The coins? Were you asking about the coins?"

_No. I wasn't, I was… look, it's an escape hatch, idiot, just take it already._

"Yeah." Dean clears his throat and pushes back what he really wants to ask: why does it matter to Sam, what Dean has to say, what he has on his mind? Why can't it be enough to do what Dad says and get on with their lives? 

Why's it all got to be so complicated with Sam?

Hell. It's easier to let Sam think Dean meant the coins all along, so that's what Dean does.

"Yeah," he says, voice gravelly in his ears. He rolls his shoulders, uneasy at the tension in his muscles, trying to ease some of the gathering soreness. "I was asking why you care about those coins so much. They're trouble. This thing we're hunting, who's hunting us, she's attached to them, and I'm pretty sure they don't mean anything good, so --"

Before Sam speaks, Dean can just _see_ the "you idiot" expression pasted on his face. He'll come out with something about how they're vital clues or whatever, like this is freakin' _Scooby Doo_ or whatever, and how they can't afford to ignore a single thing, yada-yada-yada, and fine, Dean'll admit he walked right into that one. Sue him. He's not the big thinker around here.

Dean flips up the collar of his shirt, hunches down into it, and waits for Sam to let it rip.

So when what Sam says next isn't anywhere near that, Dean ready and withering comeback dies as a bubble of breath flattening over his tongue. "For luck," is what Sam says, that and only that.

Dean's brain floats the two words around, flipping them back and forth, and they don't make any sense in either direction. "What?"

"They're for luck." When Dean hears Sam moving again, he turns to look at his brother.

What Dean sees leaves him baffled, and maybe a little scared. Sam's as tall and skinny and awkward as ever; that hasn't changed. His hair's too long, stupid curls around his ears and forehead and neck, the quickening breeze blowing it over his eyes and his mouth. 

Physically, he hasn't changed. But to Dean's eyes he still looks older, the way he did after Dean knocked him into the dirt. Not so much like a kid brother anymore. More like a grown man. 

There's something wrong about a sixteen-year-old kid with that kind of resigned weariness weighing down on him.

Sam returns stare for stare, saying nothing more just yet. He shoves his hands in his pockets, one of them fumbling around inside, then withdrawing a fist and spreading it open to show Dean what he's got. 

The light's almost gone, but Dean can still see the gleam of silver. Every last one of the coins they've seen so far. Sam's carried them with him.

"Luck," Sam says for the third time -- _that's funny; third time's the charm, right?_. 

Sam tosses his collection of quarter-and-dimes on his palm, bouncing them over from one side to the other. Dean's sure he's imagining the jingling sound, nowhere near close enough to Sam for the actual noise to reach him, but the quiet _ching, ching, ching_ is damn near hypnotic.

"Luck," Dean repeats. The word doesn't have much meaning for him. Hasn't, ever since some jackass counselor tried to tell Dad he was lucky he got out of the fire and only lost Mom. "Luck's just a trick, Sam." 

It's like Dad's told Dean time and time again: whether you succeed or whether you fail, it's all down to your own skill and your own smarts, not some cracked-out happy-hippie-cloud faith in _luck_. Trusting in your luck is asking to get killed. 

Looks like Sam never learned that lesson. Sam smiles at Dean, almost bashful, trying to share some idiotic spark of hope. The sight of Sam makes Dean's chest ache. Protect him. Keep him safe. That's what Dean's always lived by. The rules of his world.

And then there's what Sam insists on now. Respect. An equal share. Do what you want, and I'll cooperate; do what Dad wants, and I'll dig in my heels.

Every time Dean thinks he might have a hope in hell of understanding Sam, Sam slithers away as slippery as soapstone, and Dean has to start fresh. Every time.

And he always does, even when he's this confused. 

Dean never _says_ this, that's not how things work between them, but Dean remembers Mom teaching him special words for Sam. He can still shape his mental voice around those words, letter-perfect. Sam's his brother. Dean loves his brother. 

Even if Mom hadn't, though… Sam's his, all right? Sam's been his since the night their house in Lawrence burned. And Sam's all Dean has going for him, especially now. Dean knows he'd do almost anything for Sam.

So, coins. Luck. Whatever. Fine. It's not like they're worth fighting over. "For luck," Dean agrees. The wind's getting sharper and colder as night comes on. "However much luck you can get your hands on, bring it."

Dean turns for a moment, checking out the skyline as it rushes from deepening blue quickly toward black. It's getting late.

"Better pack it in for the night," is what Dean starts to say, knowing he'll have to shout now to be heard over the rising racket of the Appalachian winds. 

"Help me gather some wood, then get back under the shelter, and we'll start a fire going," is what Dean plans to say, adding "It's fucking freezing out here." He's already thinking about how to warm some of the MRE foodstuffs and doing the math for how much water each, and dividing the clothes between them for warmth.

All that goes through Dean's head in the click of two fingers, and absolutely none of it makes its way out his mouth. Because behind Sam, Dean can see the unexpectedness of foreign movement. Not much, barely there, almost invisible in the growing darkness. Someone who hadn't been field trained would never notice. Dean does. But for all his comprehension, or maybe because of it, he can't move, and neither can he speak around the abrupt cotton dryness of his mouth.

Behind Sam, a sinuous curve of bronze and black undulates, curving in and out of "S" shapes, moving fast, getting closer.

Silvery laughter chimes in Dean's ear. "Boys and their toys," that bitch whispers to Dean, blanketing him with a coat of icy air. "Boys shouldn't play with grownup's toys."

"Get out of my head." Dean can't shake off the cold of her presence. "It's not real. That's not a real snake. When I wake up, this won't have happened, so save us both the trouble and get the fuck out --"

Her giggles frost over Dean's face. "It _is_ real," she whispers. "Real as you are, and I am, my darling."

The snake coils, dangerously close to Sam. Too close. Shit. Dean thinks she's telling the truth. There's a copperhead two inches from Sam's foot and he can't break away from her to save Sam, or even shout to warn him.

"You leave him alone," Dean breathes, the taste of fear coppery on his lips. His heart beats too fast; it hurts. "Please, leave him alone."

"Bad boys must be punished," the phantasm sighs, her words ruffling through Dean's hair, over the scalp beneath. "He's been a bad boy, hasn't he? See how he's upset you."

Sam stares at Dean. "What's wrong?" he asks, taking an uneasy half-step forward, away from coiled death. "Dean, what's the matter?"

"Shh," she whispers in Dean's ear. "Let mother make it all better."


	13. Chapter 13

"Dean?" Sam notices what's going on with Dean, but not with the snake. "You're freaking me out. What's wrong?"

"Hush, now, hush," the ghost warns Dean. "If you startle a snake, you make him cross. Don't you remember?"

 _Thank you, yeah, I do._ Only it was Dad who taught him that, the first time they were in the desert at night, drowning in his own sweat and dazed from the day's heat, when he stumbled too near a long whip of danger that buzzed and rattled. Dad threw an empty bullet casing, and Dean watched, terrified to see how fast the snake struck.

 _"I want you to remember that, son,"_ Dad had said. _"What if that had been Sammy? Gotta keep your eyes open at all times, no matter where you are or how many bullets are flying. Your duty is to keep him safe. Understand?"_

Dean had understood.

"Stand. Still," Dean hisses, taking his chances on pissing her off. 

"Dean, what --"

"Snake," Dean manages, the last he's able to before the cold reaches his throat. He can't believe for a second that Sam heard him over the wind, the noise of its billows high and shrill as a screaming woman. _Please, let him have read my lips. Stand still for me, Sammy._

Sam's eyes are wide with confusion and alarm, but he obeys. He nods once as the last of the daylight slips behind the horizon faster than Dean thinks it should have, swallowing them both in darkness.

"What do you want?" Dean can only just whisper it, asking her. "I told you, I'm not your kid. He's not a toy. He's my brother."

"Hush-a-bye, now, hush."

"I'm twenty years old, for Christ's sake!"

The sound of a slap reaches Dean's ears a half-second before the pain registers. "Mind your manners and your mouth!"

"Make me."

"I can, I will, if that's what you want." Slim lines of frigid air wrap around Dean's nose, mouth and chin. 

_No. No no no no no no no._

"Leave Sam alone." Dean's lips are cold. He can't talk well, his face not cooperating with him. Jesus, he hadn't known how much went into shaping a single word, not before now, when he chips ice off his vocal chords and rasps in breath rough as saw blades, forcing it back out through numbness.

Dean thinks she might kill him with her twisted-up "love" before she kills Sam with a snake's bite, and wouldn't that be a bitch?

He can't really see Sam now, only the darker shadows where he thinks Sam might be. It's his imagination, Dean knows, but he'd swear he can hear gravel scraping under the copperhead's scales as it glides up and over Sam's foot. 

"No," Dean pleads, grating it over his teeth. All he hears is _"Nnnnnnnnn_ ". He knows she understands. 

She laughs, chiming broken silver bells in his ear, discordant and creepy. "Shh," she croons, petting him. "Cat and mouse, cat and house, when the mice are away, the cats will play." Chilly lips brush Dean's cheek. "You loved to jumble the rhymes. Make them your own."

 _Yeah. So she doesn't just think I'm her dead son, she thinks I'm her dead son who's even crazier than she is. That's great._ Dean wants to laugh, knows it's hysteria because it's dark, it's cold, they're alone, he's being adopted by a psycho ghost and Sam's about to become snake chow. 

Dean swallows the manic urge and tries to break free. He can't.

"You liked to hear the mice squeak," she whispers, stroking the top of his head with streams of frigid air. "Carving knives. Three blind mice… they don't run far, do they? How many rat-tails for a penny, sweet? How many for a dime? Drowning them is easiest, but it takes a careful hand." She kisses his cheek. "You would know, wouldn't you?"

Dean quits trying to talk. It doesn't get him any nearer to saving Sam and besides, what's the point? She knows what's in his head. 

Actually, there's an idea. _Can't talk sense to her?_ Dean thinks. _How about I talk some trash instead?_

Dean doesn't close his eyes, won't take them off Sam, but behind them he opens up his dirtiest gym locker and lets her have it. The girls he's fucked, the men he's peddled his ass to, making enough to get by before he and his baby face could make it into bars that checked ID and hustle pool instead, the lies he's told and the damage he's done and the hurts he's caused and all that he's killed. He pulls down the gates and lets it all free, all the scum floating to the surface of his piss-ant little life spent in spunk-stained motels and gas-greasy cars.

Everything fit to make a mother screech with horror and reel away.

Her grip on Dean wavers. "Filth," she whispers, sounding shocked. 

There's something damn funny about grossing out a killer ghost, but he'll snicker about it later, _to_ Sam, when she's a pile of burning bones and they're on their way outta Dodge. 

Dean hits her again, dredging up the bottom of his personal barrel. The stuff he doesn't let himself think about, ever, nightmares and dead dreams kept locked away. And if it's something to give a Winchester a nightmare, it's seriously bad news.

It should work. It doesn't. The ghost's grip wavers, then tightens, jagged edges scoring Dean's cheeks. "Wash you clean," she threatens, hauling Dean backward with a lurch. "It can't be this way. Clean, white as snow."

"Dean?" 

Dean can't see Sam, but he damn well knows that voice, snatched across the shelter, nearly stolen away by the wind. Dean throws all his power into a yell, temples pounding with the stress in his head; he thinks he feels a molar crack near the back of his jaw. He ignores the pain and shouts again.

 _Come on, you bitch,_ Dean urges in his sub-brain, the back of his head where it's not words, just ideas, just glimpses. Dean doesn't know which she reads, the first or the second, and he doesn't care. _Yeah, I called you a bitch. You got a problem? Take it up with me. **I'm not your son.** I'm his brother._

She giggles, wild and crazy. "Not a brother, naughty boy, oh, what a bad boy you are." She tweaks his hair, pulling hard. "Come with me, where it's safe. With me, where you belong."

_I belong with him._

Dean thinks it without planning to. The words pop in, boom, there and almost quiet, a hush following in their wake.

The ghost screams, nails on a chalkboard times thirteen, cat claws on a old gravestone, scratching furrows over Dean's jaw. The heat of his own blood beading up startles Dean; he's stumbling forward, on his knees, catching his weight on his palms before he knows what's going on.

Her scream goes on behind Dean. He couldn't give less of a rat's ass. He can breathe, he can move his mouth, and with all the might he has left to give, Dean roars, "Don't move!"

In the sudden hush, Dean can hear Sam _not_ moving, but he talks, all right. "Why?"

Dean has to know if this is real. "Sam, don't say a word. Not one fucking word. Look down. _Slowly_. To your right." He waits five beats, counting in time with his heart. "Is there a snake?"

Three more beats pass. Dean hears Sam catch a word in the back of his throat. He'd swear he senses the vibrations in the air when Sam starts to shake. 

Sam can't help it. Almost no one could. But that means the copperhead is real and, and, and, _goddamnit, Dean, think --_

The ghost sobs abruptly in Dean's ear, collapsing over him. Yet she's light this time, snowflakes instead of ice. When she speaks, it's muffled, like she's pressed her hand to her mouth. "Such black smirches in you," she says -- no, grieves. She touches him softly, a caress instead of a smack. "Pain. Hurt. Look at the silver, sweet, please. Not at the gold. Gold's not for us. You know better."

There's something in there. What she just said. Dean knows it like he knows up is down. But he can't think, not with her crying on him. 

"Gold kills," she insists, trying to tug Dean up now. "Let him go. You'll be safe with me. I'll protect you. Nothing will ever hurt us, ever, not for forever and a day --"

Dean's frustration slips from him in dead, hard raps, spat out on the cold-reeking ground beneath him: " _You're already dead._ "

She shuts up, shocked. The force of her presence falters. It's enough for Dean to wrench his voice back. His will. 

Dean looks up in time to see the snake curling away from Sam, retreating as fast as it can undulate. It knows the balance has changed. Dean doesn't know if it's real, and he doesn't care. His fingers close around the handle of the knife he couldn't use against the ghost but can damn well use here. One second to balance the weight, one second to take aim, and one to let it fly.

He makes the impossible shot. The snake's ugly pink mouth opens too far, tongue lashing. Dean's knife pins it to the dirt under the gravel, right behind its head.

Sam runs to Dean, but Dean's on his feet in time to catch Sam, not the other way around. Dean's not sure what to expect, a punch or a thank you or God knows, maybe another little-kid hug. 

Sam wraps himself tight around Dean, shaking hard. Dean gets it. Shock. He needs a stiff drink and to get warmed up and something to eat. They're shit outta luck on the whiskey, but fire and food he can do.

"Jeez, quit slobbering on me," Dean gruffs at Sam, gingerly giving in and awkwardly patting his brother's back after Sam hangs on just that shade past "too long", even for them, even after coming way too close to death too soon again, and refuses to let go. "C'mon, now. We're gonna pour a ring of salt around the table, and we're gonna burn the fucking table, and if she comes back tonight --"

Dean doesn't get to finish that. 

"There's gold behind his eyes," the ghost's voice and nothing more weeps for Dean to hear and Dean alone.

And then -- 

Sam's wide, thin hands press to both sides of Dean's face, holding him still. Dean flashes on a too-fast look at the gloss of something Winchesters don't do streaking Sam's cheeks, and then there's warmth and insistence pressing at Dean. At his mouth. 

Holding Dean still, refusing to let him go.


	14. Chapter 14

_Sammy?_ Dean's confused at first. _Why're you grabbing my head?_ is what he wants to ask. He can't, since the pressure on his lips has sealed them shut. _Sam, what are you…_

At first Dean can't form thoughts, only a rush of blurry images, noises and colors whirring through his head, but in a second, clattering rush of brain activity, he understands what's happening. He's being kissed. 

Dean inhales sharply, shocked. 

Sam makes a small, happy noise. 

And for a second -- or two, or three, it's hard to tell -- Dean lets it happen. He's fought so much since he last slept and ate and rested easy. It's not so much. It's a kiss. Brothers kiss -- okay, maybe not in their family, but they do -- Sam's freaked by the ghost and the snake and everything else going wrong, it's natural he'd overreact -- it's not like this is a big deal --

Except that Sam changes it all when he licks tentatively at Dean's bottom lip, then sneaks through. In. Sam tilts his head one way and their noses bump. His happy noise becomes a quick growl. He tries it the other way and even Dean can tell how much better this is. Slanted at the right angle, the hands holding Dean up for Sam's enjoyment relax. Sam hesitantly tries skimming his thumb over Dean's cheek.

And God. It's… it's not _bad_. Easy's not the right word, but it's as close as Dean's worn-out mind can come up with. Sam's clumsy, but after the first rush he takes his time. Hums in the back of his throat, spreading the full span of his hand over Dean's shoulder.

Dean closes his eyes and lets go. Lets it happen, lets it warm him and soothe his thoughts. It's just like falling asleep. He's so tired.

Dean's almost gone when Sam moves his hand, the warmth skimming awkwardly down Dean's back and --

As Sam tugs at the hem of Dean's flannel shirt, Dean tastes a foreign flavor, comprehends that this is the taste of _Sam_ and _Sam's_ hand in search of skin, and the jarring shock knocks him out of Sam's hold. He flat-palms Sam's chest, shoving him back, hard. 

Sam lets him go. The moonlight, clearer than ever, shows him in reverse chiaroscuro, light where there should be shadow, and shadow where there should be light. Makes him look strange, inhuman… except for his eyes, weary and resigned, and his lips, red from kissing.

And being kissed? _Did I?_ Dean doesn't think he let go that far, but there was a split moment there where he might have… when it was easy and he just wanted to rest.

Dean licks his lips, slightly sore from so much cold air passing through them, and from Sam. He can speak now, there's nothing holding him back, but when he looks at Sam, Dean can't find one single word to say. Nothing that isn't the question he knows Sam already hears loud and clear.

Problem is, Sam's heard that question, and hasn't answered. Unless looking at Dean like he expects Dean to sputter and wipe off his lips, and then take a swing at him _is_ his answer.

Dean drags two fingers across his lips, and the rest of his hand over his chin. He watches Sam watch him, tracking his movements, everything about Sam telling Dean he's just waiting for the axe to fall.

And Dean can tell: Sam's not sorry.

Dean's dizzy, trying to keep up. This is too big. He never even thought about Sam like that. Even now, especially now, the wrongness of it makes Dean's mouth taste metallic with alarm. And he never thought _Sam_ would want this. Why would it ever cross his mind? Sam's sixteen. Too young for all the stuff they've been through and way too young to know what he's doing.

Sam can't be in his right mind. Dean refuses to let himself think otherwise. Because his brother shouldn't ever have those kinds of black marks in his head. If it was on purpose, Dean would have to ask himself what was wrong with Sam, that he'd…

Dean remembers: _smirches_ , the ghost said, talking about Sam. Like _smudges._ Or _stains_. 

A shudder passes through Dean, because he understands her now. He doesn't want to have gotten her message. He doesn't want to think she's right about Sam. Because if. If she's right about one thing, then…

Dean's surprised to hear himself laugh. It's a sorry sound, more of a breathless wheeze, saturated with disbelief and confusion. "Your technique sucks," he says without thinking first, then grimaces. "That's not what I meant."

"I know what you meant."

Dean wants to protest the bleak certainty he hears there. Sam's already made up his mind about what'll happen next, and he's not even going to give Dean a chance to -- to what? 

Before Dean can get it together to argue back, Sam pushes past him, pointed toward the shelter. "I'll get the salt," he says, not looking behind him. "The table's bolted together. We can't burn it. Pick up some fallen branches if you want a fire."

"Sam, you gotta give me a second, man," Dean manages. He laughs again, hating the sound. "What's going on here?"

Sam stops then, and turns to face Dean. "You already know."

"You think? 'Cause I hate to tell you this, but I've got no idea here."

"You're not stupid, Dean. Maybe you think you are, but I know different."

"No?" Dean's temper flares. It's a relief. Fighting's easier than -- than -- "Maybe I am. Say that I am. Say you're wrong and I'm right, 'cause I'm telling you right now I don't have a goddamn clue what --"

Sam breaches the space between them way too easy with his lanky stride and he's up in Dean's face between one breath and the next. Just like before, the rough press of his mouth leaves Dean breathless and stunned.

Not like before is the way Sam breaks off before Dean can register anything but surprise. Sam walks backward three steps, watching Dean all the while. "I'm not stupid either," Sam says, putting his hands in his pockets. "And maybe I'm young, but I know what I want. I have for a while."

 _Thud, thud._ The axe falls, but not on Sam; these blunt blows are all for Dean.

"And you're not sorry," Dean lets himself say, unburdening the question.

"No. I'm not. I'd do it again if you'd let me."

Dean tries to joke, his last resort. "Dude, I know I'm pretty and you were worried about me and all, but --"

"Nothing about this is funny, Dean." Sam turns his back. "Come on if you're coming."

"Sam, wait."

Sam doesn't say anything. He walks away from Dean and into the blackness of the shelter. Out of the moonlight, Dean can't see Sam at all. If Dean wants to be sure Sam's okay, he doesn't have a choice but to follow.

Dean knows Sam knows that too.

He can still taste Sam on his lips. He wants to run. He needs to stay. 

In the end, there's not really a choice, is there? Dean follows in his brother's footsteps. 

Feeling his way into the shelter, one arm in front of him, Dean stays wary, on his guard. Still, when something cold slaps into his waiting palm, for a second Dean thinks it's one of those freaking coins. He almost drops it, snarling angrily.

"It's all right, Dean." Sam takes whatever-it-is back, the brush of his fingertips over Dean's hand as familiar as the purr of a good car. Dean hears the sound of scraping flint.

A brief plume of flame illuminates the space between their heads. When Sam passes the lighter back over, it's warm. "It could work," Sam says. "We wouldn't need much more than this."

Dean knows he's not talking about accelerant and flint. And that Sam's wrong. There's no way what Sam wants would ever be okay. And Dean doesn't want it. Didn't want it. Won't.

Dean resists the urge to lick his lips. He stuffs the lighter in his pocket and heads to the perimeter of the shelter, searching blindly for branches and bark. 

"I'm not going to forget about it if you pretend it never happened," Dean hears Sam say from within the shelter.

"Yeah," Dean mutters to himself. "I know you wouldn't." He snaps a twig between his hands, angry now. Again. 

This is two steps past too far fucked up, even for them. Sam shouldn't get away with this, not on top of everything else, and be damned if Dean's gonna let him. It can't be any other way.

_Can't._


	15. Chapter 15

Dean's hands carry the knowledge that weariness has otherwise knocked out of his head. They remember how to build crosshatched layers of branches and twigs, with thin curls shaved off a stick with his silver knife for tinder. Dean's still good with fire. A few minutes' patience with the lighter and blowing on the flame to keep it alive and it's all set.

When Dean sits back on his haunches, warming his hands -- and seeing how seriously gross they are, scratched and skinned all to hell, covered in dirt -- his skin gets warm, but inside he's warm too, where he's been cold for a couple of days. At least he can still do this right.

Sam shoulders in like absolutely nothing's weird. Dean wants to protest; there's big unfinished strangeness choking the air between them, put aside only long enough to get warm and fed, but apart from a narrow look at Dean that could mean challenge, all that's left of Sam is a skinny sixteen-year-old, just as filthy and ragged as Dean. Dean lets it go for the moment and shuffles aside, giving Sam room at the small fire as it grows.

Dean's the one to discover that the thin aluminum tins in an MRE aren't great with being warmed by a fire. They lose two portions of franks 'n beans to scorching, though Dean's tempted to eat 'em both anyway. His stomach gurgles and roars, wanting the food even if it's ruined. Sam's gaze follows the wreckage, his eyes huge and nervous.

Dean finds himself scrubbing his hand through Sam's hair and muttering "it's okay, we'll try again" before he knows what he's doing. Sam _looks_ at him again, same kind of determined-hungry as he is for the food, which is kind of insulting in a weird way.

Second time lucky, the tins set on the outskirts of the fire. Two portions of chipped beef and gravy, with cheese crackers and petrified cookies Dean and Sam scarf down first. The chipped beef is tough and the gravy lumpy, congealed even after it's warmed, tastes mostly like flour, needs salt and pepper and actual toast to dollop it on, but Dean could care less once there's actual warm _food_ in his mouth and in his stomach. Watching Sam out of the corner of his eye, Dean sees it's the same for him. Picky-ass Sam eats it all and starts to lick the aluminum clean. 

When Sam catches Dean watching him, Sam hesitates, fires Dean a dirty look for whatever reason, and goes right back to work, polishing the tin clean with his tongue.

Dean's empty tin dangles from his hand as he watches, confusingly torn. He guesses he should just count himself lucky that Sam's too hungry to bother making a fool out of himself by licking an MRE clean and trying to put on a show of tongue tricks at the same time, like that would change Dean's mind about anything. Then he's guilty because on his watch, Sam should not be allowed to get this hungry.

And then he's angry. No, furious. Sam's still growing. He needs more food than this. Dean figures he can get by, he's older and more used to lean rations, but Sam? He'll be skin and bone before too long. To Dean's eye, Sam's already lost maybe a pound or two he can't afford to lose. Dad knew they didn't have enough food. He _knew_ and he didn't leave them what they needed. 

Dean's chest hurts when he wonders why. Dad probably figured they could kill rabbits and squirrels for food, but Dad didn't know what was out here that'd keep them too busy.

The thought occurs to Dean that Dad did know what was out here when he kicked them out of the car. But that makes no sense, and Dean can't -- his mind recoils from thinking Dad would do that to them. He shuts the disloyalty out of his thoughts and shakes the ugliness off his shoulders like a dog shedding water.

"You okay?" Sam asks.

"Yeah. I'm great." Dean pushes the remains of his MRE aside. He's not hungry anymore.

"You don't look 'great'." Sam drops his container and challenges Dean with a direct look. _Then_ is when Sam licks his lips, slow and thoughtful. Sam makes a second pass, lingering at the corner of his mouth. 

Dean follows the movement and turns red with embarrassment and anger when Sam's eyelids close halfway and his mouth turns slightly up at the corners. He's bolder now the first move has been made, close to shameless. Taunting Dean. 

_Brat._ Dean reaches for the water, gladly turning away, and shoves a bottle in Sam's direction without looking at him. "Drink up. Then we sleep."

Sam takes the water, twists off the cap, and drinks. Every noise translates into a clear mental picture for Dean. What he refuses to let himself see, after the first second, is the way Sam's throat works beneath his skin as he raises his head to tilt the bottle back and swallows, gold and red of the firelight licking over his face.

Dean fidgets and covers it with a gruff, "Not too much. Share."

"I can do that." Sam deliberately wraps his hand around Dean's when he hands the water back.

Dean grits his teeth, stops at a flare of _ow_ from the molar he thinks he chipped, and tries to jerk the water away from Sam. This has gotta stop, and now that Dean's fed, he thinks he'll do a better job of making Sam see that this thing he wants, and fuck knows _why_ , isn't gonna happen. Sam's his brother. Brothers don't do that. Not even in their messed-up world can this be allowed to go on.

Dean turns his head and thinks about the ghost. He wonders what it's like for a ghost when they don't have anyone to haunt. Ghosts who go after people, anyway. When there's no one around, like he guesses is the usual case around here, does she go around freezing the trees and singing them lullabies? 

She wants her son back so bad. Dean's not about to feel sorry for her after all she's done to them -- to him -- but for a second he lets his eyes slide closed and wonder what that's like. He guesses he'd feel the same way if Sam ever -- uh-uh, Dean won't go there, not even in his head.

He wonders, then, if Dad misses them like the ghost misses her son. _God. Dad, why? **Did** you do this on purpose, set us on this hunt? I don't get it. What did I do wrong?_

"Dean?" Sam questions. It's just a brother asking, worried, in Sam's voice. But he's still got his hand against Dean's, a firm, rough-dry touch, not going anywhere, and _wrong wrong wrong_. Dammit, Dean hadn't even realized it was there. Too much like his own.

"I'm fine." Dean jerks his hand free and holds it up between them, palm facing Sam. "Quit asking. Please?"

"Okay." Sam's subdued. 

Dean rolls his shoulders an itch lodged between them where Sam's staring, boring a hole through him right where he can't reach. Sam could help out, but oh, hell no. Dean'll pass on that whole "you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours" thing tonight, thanks; there's no telling where Sam would try and make that go.

"Dean?"

" _What._ " Dean expects anything from Sam laying his head gently on Dean's shoulder to a full-body tackle. It's where his head is, so Dean figures that's what's going on with Sam, too.

He's wrong. Sam digs in his pockets. "The coins. I want to put them around in a circle, inside the salt."

Dean rears. "What are you, crazy? They're _hers_."

Sam's jaw juts out, stubborn as a mule, familiar. "I know that, Dean," he explains, as if Dean's too dumb to live. "I think she's afraid of them."

"How do you figure --"

"Just --" Sam's lips thin. "I don't figure. It's just a feeling, that's all. I'm going to."

"Sam, don't be stupid. Who knows what'll happen?" Dean grabs for Sam, trying to wrestle him still. "That's like bait for her; she'll come."

"How do _you_ figure?" Sam pulls free. "And how is it better that the coins are all in my pocket instead of away from me?"

This time, when he pulls, Dean lets go. "Dammit, Sam."

"Thank you," Sam says, no gratitude in there at all. But there's something lost and scared behind his eyes, and Dean can't stay mad.

"Just be careful, okay?" is all Dean can ask as Sam gathers his too-thin legs beneath him, ready to stand. "Sammy?"

"Trust me," Sam says without any irony there that Dean can see. "Do you trust me, Dean?"

Dean frowns. "I guess. Yeah."

"You guess?"

Dean's uncomfortable now. Where's Sam going with this? "Fine. I do trust you."

"Good." Instead of standing, Sam tips forward on his knees, pressing his mouth to Dean's. Shorter than the first kiss, longer than the second, mixing pieces of both together. Sam's always been a quick learner; he gets the angle he wants without even trying, biting Dean's lip and when he parts them on an indignant ouch, Sam slips past. 

Then he stands, rising to his feet and looking down at Dean. Puts Dean on an eye level he wouldn't have noticed before, and shows him what he doesn't want to see about what that kiss did for Sam. Dean's lips sting, his face burns with embarrassment, and he has to look away before the -- adrenalines, hormones, whatever -- he looks away. 

Maybe it's his fault Sam's this way. Maybe he did something to lead Sam on. Make Sam think this could happen.

 _Maybe,_ Dean thinks with a sick lurch in his stomach, _it's because I didn't stop him this time._ And he doesn't know why. He didn't _like_ it. Honest to God, he _didn't._

His mouth tingles like pins and needles, so Dean bites his lip, replacing the sting and foreign flavor with his familiar own. 

"I told you I wouldn't let you forget," Sam says, coming closer so that he's in Dean's peripheral vision, one finger twitching in a nervous tic. "Dean, would you at least talk to me?"

Dean drops to his side and rests his head on his arm, looking away from Sam. Staring at the fire. "Goodnight, Sam. Do what you gotta do with the coins and get some rest." He keeps his back stiff until he hears Sam huff with frustration and walk away.

Then, over the silver _clink_ of the coins going down, surrounding them, Dean tries to get his head on straight and back together.

It doesn't really work.


	16. Chapter 16

"Get some rest. I'll take watch." Sam's hands make _paft, paft, paft_ noises as he dusts them off. Dean hasn't turned around to face him, but he can see Sam crystal-clear in his mind's eye. Disappointed, determined, dangerous. Damn.

"Nah, you go ahead. I got this one." Dean nudges a stick ready to fall out of the fire, toeing it back in place with his boot. "See? That would've screwed the whole thing. You don't have a foundation to burn, you don't have a fire."

"I knew that."

"That a fact." It's not a question. 

"I know more than you think I know." Sam crouches beside Dean, his hand and then his chin, one-two _pow, pow_ landing on Dean's shoulder.

Dean jerks away as if he's been burned. 

"Dean," Sam says quietly. 

Dean closes his fists. "Don't."

A pause, and then Sam exhales noisily, heavily. "I'm just trying to help." He pushes away from Dean, settling cross-legged perpendicular, the firelight blazing over his face. "Would you please sleep? Neither one of us is any good if we don't get some rest, and you know what happened last time you got too tired."

Dean's face is hot from more than the campfire. That's seriously not fair, and Sam knows it. But since when has Sam ever fought fair? It's not like Dad didn't teach them to fight dirty. Whatever it takes to win, that's what they do.

Dean's heart is a little more bitter toward Dad for that. He turns from Sam and flops down gracelessly on his side, legs sprawling first, then crossed at the ankle, one knee on the ground, his head pillowed on his arm. "Whatever," he muttered. "Don't let me sleep too long."

"I won't," Dean hears Sam say, as if from a distance. As soon as he's closed his eyes, Dean falls down a long, steep spiral, down into sleep between one thought and what would have been the next.

***

Dean's following Sam through the golden road he saw once before, the one the ghost showed to him. Dean recognizes it right away -- not like he could ever forget -- and thinks first, _I'm dreaming_ , and second, _damn it!_

And yet… it doesn't feel the same, somehow. Dean closes his eyes to the sunshine and listens, trying to figure out what's different.

It hits him after a minute. There's no wind. No sound of moving air.

Surprised, Dean opens his eyes and confirms it. The ripe grass around them is as still as part of a painting. He's not breathing. That panics him at first, before he remembers: _oh, yeah. Dream_ and relaxes. The world doesn't change around him, either. Stays the same, golden as the most perfect summer day ever. Like Heaven.

Dean turns in a slow circle, confused. _What am I here for, lady?_ If she's even there. She might not be. Could be just an everyday dream, his mind spitting random shit out at him while it sorts through life.

"Hey." Sam grabs Dean above the elbow. "You made it."

"Jesus Christ!" Dean damn near pisses himself from the shock. "Sam?"

Sam gives Dean one of those patented little-brother _you're an idiot_ looks. "Who else were you expecting? C'mon, hurry up. You're gonna miss it."

"Miss what?" Dean asks, stupidly stunned. _This isn't real, is it? Nah, can't be._

Sam doesn't answer Dean. He runs ahead of Dean, cutting through the golden grass, which doesn't move to let Sam pass, more or less melting away and reshaping itself behind him.

"Sam, wait up!" Dean yells, following his brother. He's hampered by the grass and weeds tangling around his ankles and tripping him up over hidden rocks. Almost falls and busts his ass more than once. Sam's almost too far ahead now, a moving dot in the distance, seeming miles between them.

But when Dean fights his way free of the worst tangle yet, he steps forward on the crackling, peat-stinking softness of decades of dead leaves, and is somehow in the forest again.

Sam's nowhere to be seen. Dean takes another step forward, hands at his mouth to call for Sam --

And he's splashing through the creek, soaking his boots.

Then he's on dry land again, climbing a hill on the other side, where he hasn't gone in the real world. A curl of breeze twists past Dean's face, lukewarm but so refreshing Dean almost turns toward it. He's too hot now, sweating, his flannel shirt sticking to his chest and back.

"What the hell?" Dean mutters, finding he can't stop climbing the hill now that he's started. It's steep, too steep for someone who's not part mountain goat, but his hands find crevices and his boots find footholds, and against all common sense he gains ground.

The wind pushes at Dean's back, weak at first, then briefly strong, then dies completely when Dean pushes himself atop the crest of the hill. 

Dean almost loses his balance. The hilltop is maybe one foot wide, a slope twice as steep, nearly sheer vertical, dropping away on the other side. Nothing to hang onto up there. If he falls, he's dead.

 _Lady, you better have a good reason for this,_ Dean thinks, irate, before wondering why he's asking _her_ like she's ever made a lick of sense, like she's probably not behind him ready to give him a push.

It just feels… different. Weird. There's something foreign in the air. He puts his tongue out to lick his lips and discovers the air has a flavor. Slightly salty.

Dean blinks. Sam's appeared at the bottom of the hill, so far down and away he should look like a stick figure but doesn't. Dean can make out every detail of his brother from the mole under his eye to his skinned knuckles. Too clear. Too vivid. Dean wants to hide his eyes. He squints instead and keeps his focus. "Sam, get back here," he hollers. "Quit screwing around."

Sam laughs and turns from Dean. "Look what I found!" 

Dean follows the direction of Sam's pointing finger and sees, as if it was always there though he knows it wasn't a second before, the crumbling ruins of a shanty built from hand-hewn logs. The tin roof's rusted through in great big holes, the stones of the chimney have mostly fallen, and the wood itself is black, like the place burned once upon a time.

"Hot damn," Dean breathes. That's gotta be it. Where the ghost lived, when she was alive. It's probably still buried back in the woods, and now he knows where to look. _Bet my own ass we'll find some bones there,_ Dean exults. _Salt her, burn her, done, get out of here and get **moving** finally._

But… why would she show Dean this, put it in his head in a dream? Dean frowns, confused again. Maybe she _wants_ peace, or…

A flash of light near Dean's feet startles him into looking away from Sam. There's a trampled-down path where he guesses Sam walked down, who knows how at that angle. Maybe he slid on his stomach, or maybe he fell. Underneath the crushed grass Dean sees the smashed remains of dandelions that went to seed, silvery-white, no wind to blow them away on.

And under that, Dean spies the glint of silver. Dimes, a whole trail of them, holes poked through for luck, laid out in a crooked line leading to Sam's feet.

Dean shivers, though he's still too hot, not cold. This isn't right. He doesn't know how he knows, but so not right. They need to get out of there. He needs to wake up.

"Sam!" he yells, or tries to; his voice comes out as the rustiest of husks. "Sam!"

Sam laughs. He bends, picks up a dime, and throws it like a baseball. The glint of silver flashes toward the sun. It shines too brightly, hurting Dean's eyes before a flame spurts up and devours it whole. It's gold when it crashes to earth, burning through the dirt with a hiss.

Dean's burning on the outside, only his sweat keeping him from blackening and crisping open like an overdone hot dog. Inside, he's ice cold. "Whatever you're doing to him, quit it," he warns her. "That's not Sam."

"It _is_. He's gold; he burns," the ghost whispers in Dean's ear, her breath like icicles. "Put him out."

Below them, Sam laughs and laughs, more like howling now.

" _No._ " 

"Please," she begs, and it _is_ begging.

"He's my brother," Dean finds ready on his tongue. Panic seizes him. "You can't take him away from me. Please."

Her eyes open out of nowhere in front of Dean, staring into his, white showing around the thin brown iris around the huge, terrified darkness of her pupils. She's _afraid_.

 _She's_ afraid?

"I told you so," she cries.

Someone pushes him, or Dean stumbles, he doesn't know which. Maybe he overbalances flinching back from her.

Either way, Dean falls, bashing open on the sharp steepness of the rocks, rolling down, down, down to Sam.

Sam, who raises his hands as if to welcome Dean _and sets the world on fire_ \--

***

Dean jerks awake, upright, the campfire scattered where he kicked it in his sleep, the real world seeming frozen solid after the heat in that dream. The air hurts to breathe but he can't get enough, sucking in huge hungry gasps one after another. Cold sweat rolls down his forehead, his neck, his back. His throat's raw.

Nightmare? Real?

"Sam --" Dean turns fast, searching for Sammy in the dying firelight. Can't see him, can't see him, can't --

 _Fuck._ Dean sags in relief, head falling between his splayed knees. Sam's on his side facing away from the fire, probably sound asleep. That's how she got in, Dean guesses. Huh. So Sam's bright idea about ringing the salt circle with coins was about useless, and… oh.

Salt didn't work either, then. Dean's skin prickles. That makes no sense. He scans the perimeter, confused, and sees that where he kicked the fire, a cinder smudged and broke the circle.

Fear melts to relief as confusion warms to comprehension, and both blaze to irritation. "Damn it, Sam, you could have gotten us killed!" Dean reaches for Sam, fully intending to shake him awake or apply a boot to his backside if need be. 

Sam rolls on his back before Dean reaches him, eyes half-open, glassy with sleep. He's not awake, still lost in his own dreams. 

And as Dean watches, Sam shivers, tips his head back so his throat arches and his chin points up. His lips part in a way that draws Dean's attention the way a brother's shouldn't, the tip of Sam's tongue wetting them.

Dean shouldn't look at that either, but be damned if he can look away. He meant what he said to the ghost. Sam is _his_. No one else's. Fuck, not even _Dad._

"Guess that makes a difference," Dean says, watching Sam. There's a tightness behind his ribs and a roaring in his ears. It's like standing on top of that hill again, ready to fall if he's not careful, but be damned if there's any other way out and he gets that now, even if he doesn't know _what next_.

Sam shifts position, almost graceful, and in his sleep he draws his hand up over his chest. Dean's gaze follows where it came from, and _oh_.

"Dean," Sam hums, still dreaming. He exhales and shudders. " _Dean._ "

One of the branches on the remnants of the campfire breaks with a _snap_ loud as a gunshot in the cold, quiet night. Sam jerks awake with a gasp and blinks.

Dean laughs, a bark of a sound.

Sam stares at Dean, pink with embarrassment, already huffily indignant, knowing he's caught out.

Dean meets him stare for stare, then lets himself look at last, tracing down the length of Sam's body without pretending he's not. Come morning, he'll take Sam and see if he can find the ghost's bones in the shanty.

But for now…

"Dean?" Sam struggles up on one elbow and bites his lip, uncertainty and worry written on his face. "Dean?"

 _What's done is done,_ Dean thinks, eyes on his brother. _What's done is done, and you're not hers to hurt. Mine. Whatever it takes… she's gonna know that._

"Sammy," Dean replies, nodding to him. "Think we need to clear the air."


	17. Chapter 17

Dean looks away. He meant what he said, it's just… hearing it out loud. It's not what he thought it'd be. Feels like the first time he hunted on his own, too much adrenaline making him jumpy.

He fixes his attention on the broken salt line, stark white against the grungy shelter floor. Careful not to lose any, he nudges the scattered crystals together until they're a solid barrier again. Prods the edges, meticulously aligning them. They're the only protection he and Sam have against the ghost. She's gone now and no way is he letting her in for this. 

Anyway, Dean took the first step. Sam should go next.

"Dean." Rustling noises warn him of Sam's approach, Sam crawling toward Dean on the concrete, crushing random leaves into brown-and-umber crumbles beneath his knees. He hears Sam's quick, uncertain breath, then a second later Sam's hand comes to rest on Dean's forearm, pulling him away from the salt. 

"Good as it gets, huh?" Dean rolls a small, stray cluster of salt crystals in place, firm against the line.

"Nothing's wrong with good as it gets." Sam's closer now, inching nearer, moving slow and careful like he thinks Dean is going to spook and skitter away -- which, no matter how determined Dean is, might happen. Sam's his brother and brothers don't do this.

Except, apparently, Sam does. Wants to. And now Dean does, will, too. 

Dean closes his eyes when Sam rests his chin on Dean's shoulder, settling in. He's good with not looking at Sam's face. There's enough that comes through when all he does is listen to Sam. 

Sam awkwardly slides his arms under Dean's, lacing his hands with their skinned knuckles together over Dean's stomach. Takes a deep breath, the tips of his bangs an annoying, brushing tickle on Dean's collarbone, and says, "You told me we needed to clear the air. Start clearing."

"Kinda hard to do with you cutting off my oxygen, Stretch Armstrong," Dean bitches to try and keep it normal.

Sam tightens his hold on Dean. Yeah. Dean gets it. Normal's a hole in the wall in Illinois, or somewhere else lost in America. "I just don't want you to run away from me."

Ah, dammit. "Sam… I won't. You know I won't."

Sam scoots closer behind Dean, one bony knee on either side of Dean's hips, and hangs on stubborn as a burr. "You want to," he mutters.

Dean rubs his forehead, pushing back an ache. Sam's right. It's… Sam's too close, hot as an electric blanket draped over his back and making his chest all the colder where it's exposed to the frost and dark of the winter night. Dean's not used to it. Yet. 

He won't back down. Dean's always known Sam belonged to him. His to take care of, his to protect, his to show how the world works. Only now the tables have turned, right? The thing is, though, if Dean wants Sam to belong to him and only him, then he has to belong just as much to Sam.

And he wants it. The need for Sam, once woken up in his head, has dug its claws in Dean. Makes him itch, makes him want to know what Sam's hands feel like where he honestly never ever thought they'd go. 

It dizzies Dean, how deep this hunger goes. Makes him wonder if it was always there, something dark and fascinating biding its time in his gut. 

He wants what's on offer. Sam. But to do this, it's letting go of the last part of "Dean" that Dean called his own. 

Sam nudges Dean in the ribs with his thumbnail once, then again. The poke is wicked sharp. Dean wonders if he's already lost weight too, wants to look down and check. He hesitates, because Sam's hands are there, then nerves up and takes the plunge.

Sam's hands are huge, covering a good two-thirds of Dean's stomach. Seeing them there, knotted together, bony knuckles and skinny fingers closer than Dean had thought to below the belt... it does things to the hunger. Sharpens it the way salt and pepper breathe life into tasteless roots.

Dean smacks Sam's hands away. He tries to twist around and look at Sam. "You sure about this?"

"Yeah. Yeah," Sam repeats, too fast for it to be the truth, though Dean doesn't think it's a lie, either. He digs the sharp point of his chin deeper in Dean's shoulder. Dean can just imagine the shuttered, stubborn look on Sam's face, lips pressed tight and eyes narrow. He pushes his closed fists up over Dean's bottom rib, then back down, an inch or two further. "I'm sure." 

"You're sixteen, Sam. Hormones make a guy pretty crazy around that age. I remember." Dean has to be 100% on this, or he'll look for another way. Though he already knows there isn't one.

Sam snorts quietly, blowing a strand of Dean's hair over his temple. Dean thinks, absently, that he needs to get it cut or he and Sam will end up looking like Cousin It twins. "You gonna freak out all night?"

"I'd considered it." Dean's hands twitch. "Changed my mind." 

Sam nods, chin jerking as he swallows hard.

"I got you." Dean works up the nerve to settle his palms over Sam's knuckles. Almost flinches away at the strangeness. He's been in this situation before with girls, but he's the one behind them, both of them naked, his dick hard on her ass and her wet under his fingers. Those days, Dean would be the one coaxing the lady he's with to relax and trust him. 

With both mind and body twisted around like this, Dean's not too sure how to start.

Sam does it for Dean, exhaling deeply and wiggling all the way flush with Dean. Dean has to close his eyes tight and bite his lip when Sam gets there, surprised despite himself at how it affects him. Male equals hard parts, not soft. Add in brother and Dean gets "weird". He feels the cold more sharply, the wind picking up outside the circle of salt they sit in, covering the moon with clouds so that even if Dean wanted to, he couldn't turn around and see Sam clearly.

S'okay. Dean's honed his skills this trip. He doesn't need his eyes when he has his hands and his body.

Getting a better hold on Sam's hands, Dean settles in, waiting for this close physical contact to shift from shocking to ordinary strange. It's like… like, Dean doesn't know… like someone's run him a bath, brim full of water that's too hot. Can't jump in head first. He'd scald himself. Gotta take it one toe at a time.

Dean rubs his thumb over the back of Sam's wrist, clumsy. "So be honest," he starts. He honestly wants to know. If he didn't have this choice in front of him, he'd have found another way. "Why me, Sam?"

Sam rests his head against Dean's. "I don't know," he admits after a pause. "Who else do I have?"

"Don't say 'Dad'," Dean and Sam say at the same time. They crack up in the same breath, together, laughing because that's the better choice out of what they've got right now.

"Dean?" Sam turns his face toward Dean's though Dean knows Sam can't see him clearly either in the dark, tickling when he speaks. "Can I?"

"Thought you agreed we needed to have a talk."

"Since when do you ever want to talk? About anything, if no one makes you?"

"Since when do you ever shut up when I ask?" Dean scoffs, but to be honest Sam's got a point and it's not easy to concentrate when Sam's lips move on purpose up under Dean's jaw, licking tentatively. Dean shifts position, heart rate picking up.

Sam stops. "You tensed up. What's wrong?"

Jesus, what a question. "This is weird as hell, Sam," Dean admits, his fake laugh unsteady.

"Do you want me to leave you alone?" Sam unlaces his fingers and spreads one palm flat over Dean's stomach. He moves the other uncertainly down to the T-shirt tucked in under Dean's flannel shirt, picking at the fabric, clumsy as hell as he tries to pull it out of his jeans. Inexperienced.

And Dean realizes suddenly: for all his pushiness, Sam's scared to death too. This is as huge for Sam as it is for Dean. For some reason, there's an amazing relief in that. He's not alone.

"Dean?" Sam asks again, uncertain now.

"No. Keep going." Dean says it out loud, because thinking and talking and doing, they're all different. One doesn't mean anything without the other to back it up. He guides Sam, though he still can't quite make himself look, just navigating by feel. "You okay?"

"Yes." 

"Okay, then." Dean lets go of Sam's hand. Though Sam seems startled at first, he's a smart kid. And he bites, his teeth sharp in Dean's neck while he carefully nudges his way under the denim and takes hold.

Dean squeezes his eyes shut tight. _Jesus._ He wonders, half-aware, if this is what Sam dreamed about, all hot and bothered and calling Dean's name. Or if Sam's had this planned out and stored up in his spank bank for a long time now. Probably both.

"Dean?" Sam takes his free palm off Dean's stomach and wraps his arm tightly back around Dean's middle. "What happens now?"

Maybe it's the devil who makes Dean grip Sam's wrist hard. Sam winces out loud, worrying Dean about maybe having creaked Sam's bones. "You tell me. You figure it out." What he doesn't say, but they both hear, is _you asked for this. You get to be the leader._

But because it's his second nature to look out for Sam, Dean asks, "Still sure?"

Dean winces at the jab from the new tightness in Sam's jaw. " _Yes._ " 

"Then go for it. It's okay," Dean says, and means it. A sense of recklessness rises in Dean, reminding him of what it felt like to drive the Impala just because he wanted to for the first time, not because they had to burn rubber away from something bad. Free-flying, nothing able to stop him.

It makes Dean want more. He's crazy and he doesn't care.

Dean backwards-head-butts Sam, smacking him in the nose. "Turn around."

"What?"

"Turn around. I'm tired of being the chick here." Dean follows Sam, turning him 180 degrees and prodding him in place so Dean's back is to the fire and Sam sits in front of him, a mirror reverse of how they were before. "See?" Dean copies what he showed Sam earlier, careful not to spook Sam as he finds the place for his hand and molds it over _hard_. "Better?"

Sam breathes out, almost a silent _oh_.

"Taught you everything else you know," Dean tries to explain, embarrassment rising again in the face of Sam's gratitude. Thank you is still even weirder than -- hell with it. "Figure you need a hand."

"Don't joke."

"Wasn't joking. Here, like this." Dean can do bravado. Balls and bragging is easy. He pulls up and away for a sec to undo the snap on Sam's ragged jeans, loose threads catching on a callus on his thumb. "Yeah?"

Dean can just get a glimpse in a flicker of mostly-gone moonlight, of Sam's mouth falling open as Dean draws the zipper down. _Yeah,_ he thinks when Sam's breathing hitches and speeds, oddly proud of himself. 

He can't exactly kiss Sam at this angle, though he bets for sure Sam would go crazy for that, but he can and does copy Sam's chin over the shoulder thing, breathing warm on the bare skin of Sam's neck. "Only this for now," he warns. "Okay?"

"Yeah. Okay." Sam licks his lips, a slick, wet sound. "Later, maybe. Again? More?"

Dean's ears prickle. "Pushy," he jokes to cover for a jolt of unexpected uncertainty. This is one thing, this isn't even naked, he hasn't even seen… Jesus, he doesn't know about _more_ , it's not like he's an expert, like he's even sure he can do this right. And later? Who knows what'll happen five freakin' minutes from now?

"Maybe," Dean says, chopping the half-truth into pieces.

"Tomorrow?"

"Just this for now," Dean says again, distracting Sam away from what he says with what he does, using his hand, his thumb, _feelssodamngood, scary good_ , not playing fair on purpose. He can't argue right now. "Sam?" 

"Yeah. Yeah, okay, good. Like -- like I ever thought, even, this --" Sam shivers. He's young, it doesn't take much. 

"Dean," Sam says as he shakes, exactly the way he did before, when he was still dreaming. When they both were. His head comes back, throat curving. " _Dean_."

"I got you," Dean swears, same as he always has to Sam as he gentles Sam down, fingers sticky and slowing; he's got Sam and he's gonna keep him. 

_No one can go back from this and that's what I want. Him. Sammy. Dad gave him to me. Drove away and left him with me. He belongs to me. I'll **make** it work._

Outside the circle of salt and coins, the wind picks up. It screams at them, high and full of sorrow, trying to blow the salt away. Doesn't work. Dean listens to Sam instead, his breathing, the speeding pulse beneath his ear at Sam's throat. He focuses on rough hands flexing on his knees, the smoother skin on Sam's neck, pins and needles in his nerves. Not the cold. Not the night. Just Sam.

 _Mine,_ Dean thinks, willing the ghost and the wind and the cold away. _This is me staking my claim._

_You? You can go to hell._

And be damned if Dean's not the one who's going to send her there. As soon as the sun comes up, before she can try and attack him or Sam again -- because he knows she'll try -- he'll find her bones. And then she'll burn.


	18. Chapter 18

When the sun rises on a new day, the first pale, watery streaks of light wake Dean immediately, no matter how little sleep he got last night. Sam passed out almost before Dean could do him the favor of tucking and zipping, definitely before he could return the favor, but Dean's okay with that. His right hand's in good working order and besides, they've got time. 

Which reminds Dean, blinking at the dawn: today, they hunt.

Dean raises up on his elbows, yawning. His mouth tastes foul, like old socks, and his teeth are fuzzy. _Toothbrush woulda been great, Dad, thanks,_ he grouches, shaking off the twinge of guilt that comes with a disloyal thought. 

He gauges the sky, the temperature, the weather. Odds are good it'll rain, though Dean's not sure if that means "sprinkle" or "haul out the ark". So he and Sam need to get a move on quick, while there's at least some half-assed sunlight to find their way through the forest by, following the ghost's road to her shanty, and then? Burn, baby, burn. 

Sam fell asleep with his head on Dean's stomach, breath warming a strip of skin where Dean's T-shirt was still rucked up, his hand tucked up under Dean's knee. If Dean was worn-out enough and girly enough to fall asleep with his hand knotted in Sam's too-long hair, well, it's not like either of them is in a position to point a finger and mock.

Last night was… weird. Good-weird, but still. Dean dozed off more than once trying to make sense of it all, and finally gave up maybe the third time. What the hell. Sam's hands on Dean feel good, he knows for a fact now that his hands on Sam make Sam feel even better, and it's something they can both grab in the real world to hang on to.

Nothing came off last night, just unbuttoned and unzipped, but as Dean taught Sam while the campfire burned down to ash, there's a hell of a lot you can do even when it's too cold to get naked.

They even laughed a few times. Dean's already stored those memories away to savor on a rainy day. 

Dean studies Sam, where Sam rolled off and curled up sometime after the fourth time Dean couldn't sleep, Sam's head butted hard to Dean's hip and Sam's fist under his chin. 

"Dork," Dean says quietly, shoving the tail ends of bangs away from Sam's mouth where he's about to inhale them on his next snore. Funny how, each time Dean tries it, it gets easier to touch Sam. Dean remembers how the old folks say "you can never go home again", but maybe that's not a bad thing. He's starting to think so. 

Sitting up fully, Dean shakes the last of his sleep away and scrubs his knuckles over the top of Sam's head in lieu of an alarm clock. "Rise and shine, Sammy."

" _Nnnnnnnnn,_ " Sam mumbles, scrunching up tighter and hiding his head in his arms.

"No fair stealing my job. I'm the one who hates early mornings. Now c'mon, I said wake up," Dean insists, punching Sam's shoulder. 

Sam rolls over, hair smashed over one side of his face, his eyes puffy from exhaustion and his mouth twisted up tight. "Go 'way."

"Now that's singing a different tune." Dean changes tactics. He hitches over behind Sam, gets his hands under Sam's pits and stands, dragging ninety feet of grouchy little brother along with him.

Halfway to standing, Sam starts to kick and flail. He nearly clips Dean in the teeth with his elbow. "I'm up, I'm up, jeez." He pulls away from Dean and staggers his way to balanced on his own two feet, glaring darkly at Dean as soon as he's not in danger of falling. "Jerk."

It's music to Dean's ears. Whatever else might be new, they're still brothers. Dean likes that.

"I had a dream last night," Sam mumbles, rubbing sleep out of his eyes.

Dean tugs Sam's fist away. "Idiot. You'll poke out your cornea."

"You can't poke out a --" 

"Wanna bet?"

"No." Sam repeats himself with extra emphasis, "I said, I had a dream last night."

"You had a lot of things last night, dude. I--" Dean stops, grin disappearing. He'd been reaching for the duffels, hungry enough for MRE breakfast crap to appeal to his growling stomach, but the word "dream" halts him in his tracks. 

Sam waits for Dean to process that, watching him and yawning wide like it's no big deal at all.

"Okay." Dean deliberately gets back to work, keeping himself busy opening the duffel with the MRE's and hauling out assorted small aluminum packs to study. Corned beef. Franks 'n beans. Mac 'n cheese. Corned beef. Heart attack in a vacuum-sealed pack. Good times. "Ordinary dream, nightmare, dirty dream? Other?"

"Well, you weren't in it." Sam stretches and cranes his neck to try and see the labels on the MRE's. 

"Nightmare, then."

"Shut up." Sam reaches for one of the mac 'n cheese packs. "This is what we have for breakfast?"

"If you don't want yours, I'll take it."

Sam picks at the edge of the container. "I want pancakes."

"Ain't life tough?" Dean cracks open one of the corned beef packs and digs in. It's disgusting, but it's filling. It'll do. "Pancakes sound awesome," Dean says with his mouth full. He swallows. "And hot maple syrup. The real stuff. I want some bacon, too."

"Eggs," says Sam. "Scrambled eggs with white pepper."

"Ooh, la, la, fancy. Me, I want some coffee." Dean would kill for a cup of coffee. "So. What'd you dream about?" he asks, chewing again, already two bites from finishing the corned beef and wiping the corners clean for every last smear. 

"Random stuff, I guess. Not any ghosts or snakes or houses falling out of the sky or anything." Sam wipes up the final smudge of fake cheese in his tin and licks his finger clean. 

Dean relaxes the muscles he'd held tense while pretending he wasn't worried and waiting for Sam to get to the point. "Way to make me stroke out, Sam. Why'd you even bring it up?"

Sam crinkles up his tin and lobs it over the table. The aluminum catches the pansy-ass sunlight and makes it shine too brightly. "I think I figured out what the silver coins are all about. And Mom was in my dream. I think it was Mom. She looked like the picture Dad carries --"

"Wait, wait, wait." Dean's torn in two directions, need-to-know and _tell me now_. Mom? He makes a grab for Sam, snagging a fistful of sleeve, but as Dean does, the sunlight catches off his ring same as it did with the meal tray. The sharp light's fit to blind him. 

Dean swears, sneezes, and lets go. "What, now?"

"Silver's big in old wives' tales in Appalachia. It repels the supernatural. Witches, ghosts, you name it."

Dean's not impressed. "And? We already knew that. That all you got?"

Sam's chin juts out. He's annoyed. "Screw you."

Dean raises an eyebrow.

Sam blushes to the tips of his ears and looks away, mumbling under his breath. He takes a deep breath, rubs his fisted hands on the fraying-open knees of his jeans, and blurts out, "All the coins have holes in them. All of them."

"And?" Dean prompts.

"And I got to thinking, when I saw her. The woman who might have been Mom."

"Just a dream, though?" Dean doesn't want the ghost to have gotten her filthy hands on Mom's memory, or for Sam to have seen her and think he's seen Mom. "Sam?"

"Just an ordinary dream," Sam replies, studying Dean curiously. "I mean, I think so, anyway. She likes messing with your head, not mine."

True. Dean relaxes still more, gesturing for Sam to go on.

"Whoever I dreamed about, when I woke up and remembered her it made me think about these, and then it clicked." Sam picks up one of the dimes, scraping his thumbnail over the crudely drilled hole. "Mom liked jewelry, didn't she?"

Dean closes his hand automatically, protecting the ring Mom gave him, that Dad left for him to find. Why? He still doesn't understand, and wonders if he ever will. "Yeah, I guess. Most ladies do, don't they?"

"Exactly." Sam looks at Dean, triumphant, ignoring Dean's ring. "I bet the coins belonged to her. Bet she wore them on a necklace for a luck charm."

Fucking _A_. Dean could kick his own ass three times around the parking lot for not thinking of it before. 

"The coins are everywhere, and so is she," Sam chatters on. "Maybe the string broke up here and she didn't know it until she'd gone wherever --"

Or that piece of T-shirt Dean remembers finding halfway to the creek. Maybe whoever got munched on picked up the necklace of dimes and tried to carry it away. Bet she wouldn't have liked that.

Damn if they're not both geniuses! "And if they're what's binding her instead of or as well as her bones, silver can be melted," Dean concludes, knocking fists with Sam. "Sammy, my man, good job!"

Sam puffs up with pride, giant bags under his eyes and a huge smile. "Yeah?"

"Hell, yeah. You grab the water, I'll get the weapons, and then what do you say we go put her down?"

Sam nods eagerly. He gets to his feet, takes a swipe at the brown leaf crumbles stuck everywhere, and gives up, tugging his hand through his hair and leaving a bunch of them on top of his head like graveyard confetti. He swings the duffel with the water bottles in it over his shoulder, looking overall like the world's biggest five-year-old eager to start school, but he carries the weight of the mission on him without a complaint.

Dean's damn proud of Sam. They could go a long way together, even if it was only ever just the two of them.

"What are you staring at?" Sam asks.

"Your giant head." 

Sam snorts, killing possible awkwardness between them. Good. "Ready or not?"

"Move 'em out." Dean steps over the salt line, not through it -- you never know -- with Sam beside him. What with Sam's long legs, he's in front of Dean in three steps and gaining fast.

Maybe it's to remind Sam of who's leading the way around here that moves Dean to smack Sam's ass, the loud _whap_ echoing over Sam's startled yelp. 

Dean smirks his best, most annoying smirk in reply to Sam's shocked look. Yeah, maybe it's about taking charge. But then again, maybe it's not.


	19. Chapter 19

Walking the forest path Dean saw in his dream bothers him. It's too easy, like reading a map inside his head, like following a trail of bread crumbs through the forest. Something's got to be wrong with that.

"Dean." Sam's already found a favorite way and place for casual touching, laying his hand on the middle of Dean's back with his fingers splayed open. Dead center between ass and shoulder blades, comfortable without getting either of them worked up for good or bad. 

It's maybe a little unmanning to think about just how much surface area Sam can cover with one of his hands compared to the span of Dean's back, so Dean chooses to consider instead potential plans for taking advantage of Sam's gargantuan mitts. 

"Dean?" Sam nudges him.

What? Dean drifted off. He shakes his head, squeezing his eyes shut and blinking open wide. Jesus, last thing he wants or needs is to doze off here, or even lose his focus.

Dean looks down at his feet. The tips of his boots touch the lip of the creek bed, maybe a foot down into the steadily-flowing cold spring water. The creek looks too innocent for all they've gone through here, trickling smoothly over water-polished stones, sand, the sound of the moving water almost musical.

There's no sight, smell, sound, taste or touch of the ghost's presence down here today. Dean's not exactly comforted by that. He'd like to think they're safe, sure, but he knows better. Not much stops this lady when she's got her stubborn on.

She has to be leaving them alone for a reason. She showed Dean the path to her old home in his dream, Dean's sure of it. 

Dean thinks she's getting stronger. More focused. Proactive, is that the word? Dean snorts. Big words that boil down to: she's taken the fight outside Dean's head. She _wants_ them to come find her. And it's got something to do with Sam. 

Dean swears he'll fry her before she gets half a chance, but he knows she's nowhere near done trying to "protect" him by hurting Sam. He remembers the hiss of the copperhead and bites back a shudder. 

"Dean," Sam insists for a third time, jostling him. "Are you with me?"

"Yeah. Yeah, I'm here," Dean answers absently, only a tad annoyed, mostly warming up on the inside at the way Sam looks back at him all sober and worried. Sam actually cares. A lot. Dean's not used to that, more accustomed to being turned out with an order to _do the job like a man, take it like a soldier, son_. But… Dean figures he could get used to someone watching his back, who actually wants to. Dean thinks he'd really like that.

"So…" Sam waves at the creek.

Dean grins at Sam, cocky and self-assured to put Sam at ease -- if Sam's got his back, then turnabout applies, not that he minds -- and says, "Nothin' to it."

Gathering his balance on the thick mat of leaves and dirt on the creek's edge, Dean pushes up and forward, jumping the water. He touches down on the other side without a drop of water touching him, whooping out his victory.

When he looks back for Sam, Sam's shaking his head and rolling his eyes. "Showoff."

"You think you can do better?" Dean twitches his fingers at Sam, curling them toward his palm in the universal _bring it_ sign.

As Dean had hoped, that pricks Sam's pride enough to get him to man up to the challenge instead of scoffing. Sam puts his head down, backs up to get a decent running start to kick off from, and _whoosh_ , even if he does look like someone cut a puppet's strings mid-air for all the grace Sam _doesn't_ have, he lands safe and sound on the other side with Dean, on his hands and knees in the mulch, laughing up at Dean.

Dean thumps Sam on the shoulder. "Bet you'd make a hell of a track star," he jokes, offering him a hand up. "Wicked on the long jump, if you didn't concuss the judges."

"Oh, you think so?" Sam grabs Dean's wrist and hauls him down, a heel to the kidneys and a brief sensation of flying, and then Dean's on his back, sucking winded for air and staring up at the tatters of cloudy gray sky that are all he can see among the forest treetops.

"Dean?" Sam's on his knees beside Dean, pushing at him. Dean's still trying to breathe. Jeez, the kid got him good. Musta hit the solar plexus or something, because oxygen refuses to flow where it's pretty urgently needed.

Dean tries to wave to Sam, tell him it's okay. _Calm down, dude, it was an accident._ Sam overshot and hit too hard. Shit happens. The fear radiating from Sam and the frantic patting of his hands, trying to snap Dean out of it, frustrate the hell out of Dean only because he can't seem to drag in the air he needs to speak.

He manages to grab the untucked ragged edge of Sam's T-shirt and tug, glaring at his brother. 

Sam stares back, lip caught warily between his teeth. "Are you okay?"

Dean wishes he could sigh. He settles for patting Sam's knee instead. He's starting to get some air now, wisps seeping up his nose, and figures he'll be fine in a second. That first gasp will hurt like hell, but hey. Lesson learned for Sam and for himself.

Dean tries to grin same as before, mocking Sam. _Clumsy,_ he mouths. Sam snorts, deep and nasty; Dean makes a face. His good mood's returning. 

"It was my fault, right?" Sam's hand hovers over Dean's heart, still fretting. "It wasn't the ghost playing with us, was it?"

Dean shakes his head. He and Sam are cool. The gasp hits with about as much _ow, shit, ow_ as Dean anticipated. Sam helps him sit up and cough through it, the taste of rotten leaves and old, unturned earth thick as the dregs of beer on Dean's tongue.

"Um. Sorry," Sam tries to offer.

"S'okay. Help me up, and no funny stuff." Dean gets to his feet and rubs the back of his head, where he thinks there'll be a big sore lump rising. "Better we get a move on though, huh?"

Sam nods, embarrassed. Dean scruffs up Sam's hair and gives him a push. "Forward march."

"Yes, sir."

"Smartass." Dean lets Sam walk ahead of him a few feet this time, giving himself the chance once Sam's back is turned to take a quick, nervous scan of the trees and sky. He's got a bad, bad feeling about this, even if Sam didn't do it on purpose, if _she_ saw…

Dean waits for the cold whisper soughing in his ear, for the sharp scratch of her icy nails, and for the faint clink of frozen silver. None of them comes. The wind sounds maybe a little like crying, but he thinks -- thinks -- that's his imagination overacting.

He hopes so. "Accidents happen," he mutters, searching for any sign of her, warning her back. "This was my fault, not his. I walked right into it. So you leave him alone. Understand?"

The wind falls silent. Goosebumps rise on Dean's arms.

A drop of the cold rain Dean had predicted when he woke up that morning glances off his cheek.

"Dean?" Sam's stopped four yards away. Too far; Dean hadn't planned to let him get so ahead. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing." Dean glares at the trees. "Hurry it up. Storm's coming."

***

Thirty yards further as the crow flies and as near as Dean can figure, they've arrived.

The trek wasn't an easy one, the two of them forcing their way through thorns knotted thickly in spiky fences and trees twined together or growing separately out of one trunk, the miserably cold rain finding its way through the branches and wetting them just past the fine line between "can do" and "irritating as fuck".

Thirty yards past the creek, though, or so Dean thinks, when he pushes back a low-hanging loblolly pine branch for Sam to pass through, there they are. And there it is, the ghost's home. The weather-beaten, gray-worn remnants of a shanty that burned down long before either he or Sam was born. Dean knows, deep down where the blood flows through him, to his bones, that the dream led him true. 

Dean stops for a moment first to eye the shanty and savor the building sense of victory. He remembered the path. He got them there in one piece each.

Dad'd be proud, maybe. Maybe not. That might be okay, as long as he and Sam stand up straighter when they remember this.

Dean still doesn't get why the ghost led him here. Why should he care, though? He'll end her -- he and Sam will end her -- and they'll move on. Signed, sealed, delivered.

"You did it." Sam's almost bubbling up, excited in a way Dean's never seen Sam get before, not even when Sammy wasn't even old enough to talk. "Dean!"

" _Oof!_ " Dean gets the breath knocked out of him for the second time in one day, Sam plowing into him with windmilling arms and a tight hug complete with manly backslapping. 

Dean laughs, can't help it even if the rain's picking up and the cold wind cuts through his wet clothes and Sam ain't the freshest flower that ever grew in the forest for damn sure. He lets in go on for a minute, enjoying, then pushes Sam off. 

"What can I say? I'm just that good," is what Dean starts to say. He only gets through "What can I --" before Sam cuts him off with a hard, lightning-fast press of mouth on mouth. 

Sam backs off fast, eyeing Dean warily in case of protest.

Dean doesn't have a drop of protest in him anywhere. He mock-jabs Sam in his ribs and says, "First thing we're stocking up on when we get out of here?" Three beats for anticipation to build, and Dean says, snickering, "Mouthwash." He pushes Sam as Sam's rush of relief leads straight into a play punch. "Go on, go take a look. I'm right behind you." 

Sam looks sideways at Dean, kind of bashful, then chuckles under his breath. "Maybe soon."

"Oh, huh, you think so?" Dean admires the view. "Fight you for it."

Sam throws his head back and laughs, overexcited and crazy-relieved, his mouth open wide and his teeth white and sharp. 

When Dean sees that, he goes cold inside, the warmth he's carried around draining from him and ice water filling his insides instead. The dream. Standing in front of him, laughing with -- fuck, even with his arms out at his sides -- Sam looked exactly like this in the dream the ghost sent to lead Dean here, way too much like this -- 

The rain kicks up, driving down sharper than needles and thick as the choking weeds. Dean almost loses sight of Sam, but by squinting through spiked eyelashes when he looks down, Dean can see them. 

They might still have come off a necklace string, but if they were ever scattered before they damn well aren't now, laid out in a row, deliberate as an arrow's path, spaced perfectly apart.

Thirteen silver dimes, pointing straight to Sam.

"Down in the valley," the ghost whispers for Dean to hear alone, riming his face with hoarfrost. Thin rivulets of frigid water stream down Dean's hand, under his ring that went from Mom to him through Dad to him, lines of ice tugging at the silver. "Valley so low… I told you so. I tried, sweet. Now this is on your head. Hang your head low. Your fault."

The wind carries her away on a sob, leaving Dean drawn up tight where he stands, the sound of his heart thundering in his ears.

Three yards away, Sam laughs like a kid and opens his mouth wider to drink down the rain.


	20. Chapter 20

"Don't you dare. Don't you fucking dare!" Dean tries to grind the first of the silver coins under the heel of his boot, smash it deep into the muddy dirt, but it's like it isn't even there or he isn't for all the good he does. He can feel it, though, a burning circle under the sole of his foot. 

The silver gleams at Dean, mocking him, then --

 _Clink._ It disappears, a small burst of white fire rising from the silver, quenched instantly by the driving rain.

Dean blinks, stares, mouth open, cold water blurring his line of sight. _What?_

Another coin vanishes. Another. _Clink. Clink. Clink._ All of them burning bright, leaving nothing behind.

 _Clink. Clink. Clink._ Heading directly to Sam.

Dean cups his hands around his mouth and hollers, as loud as he can, "Sam, look out!"

Sam stops laughing. The rain parts on an angry gust of wind, and Dean gets a second's glimpse of his brother's expression. His kid-like delight wipes away with the raindrops, leaving him wide-eyed and scared. "Dean?"

_Clink. Clink._

"Sam, the coins!" Dean shouts. His body finally cooperates and he lurches forward, sinking ankle-deep in the mud with each step. The wind and the water fight Dean. He has to put his head down, unable to look, and hunch his shoulders, warring for each step. "Get out of the way, Sam! Move back, now!"

"Why?" Sam yells back, scared. "What's happening?"

"Don't ask questions, just go!" Dean collides with Sam and knocks him down, no time for anything fancy, rolling them out of the way. The last of the coins bursts into scalding white flame an inch or two from Dean's head; he can smell burning hair where the heat bastes his temple.

"What was that?"

Dean doesn't answer. He's biting the inside of his cheek, hard, to keep from yelling. Pain's hard to place, where it came from and why, and for a second he thinks a coin he missed is burning his ankle. When another sharply stinging bite strikes Dean's back, he knows he was wrong. 

He shades his eyes and squints up at the roiling dark gray sky, then rolls on top of Sam, shielding him. Ice strikes the back of Dean's head and jolts away, jarring them together, teeth clacking. 

"Hail," Dean says over Sam's ear, not quite able to hold back a hysterical laugh. "It's fucking _hailing_ , Sam."

Sam doesn't laugh. "Dangerous?"

"What do you think?" Dean's mind races. The hail replaces the rain, mostly, vicious chunks of ice that are easier to see through. He tries to protect his head as well as Sam's, an arm over his forehead, and looks. Shelter. Gotta find someplace to hide. Woods? No. The forest canopy is thick, but ice chunks this big and vicious could get through.

Dean lights on the shanty and groans. A good half of the tin roof, once green, now mostly red and brown with rust, still stands over the ramshackle walls. 

"Figures," he mutters. "You're damn well determined to get your 'boy' home, aren't you? Bitch!" 

Fine. Dean does what he's gotta do for Sam's sake. "Get up," he shouts, hoping Sam can hear him. "Watch your head, get your coat over it, grab onto my shirt, let's go --"

"Go where?"

"Inside!"

 _Now_ Sam laughs, high and hysterical.

"Don't make me bitch-slap you --"

Sam snatches Dean's hand, raw-knuckled fingers lacing tight with Dean's. "I'm okay," he says, thready but stubborn. "We have to, I know. Hurry!"

Dean clamps Sam's hand tight and yanks him forward. He wraps his arm around Sam's shoulders and hauls him forward, breaking into a run, head down and fighting to gain the pitiful safety of the tin roofed shanty. "Don't let go," he warns, shivering, "don't you let her separate us."

"I won't," Dean thinks he hears Sam gasp back, though it's almost impossible to hear over the furious dull thudding of hail. Doesn't matter. Dean's got him. He can't see, so he closes his eyes and pushes on. Finds the shanty wall first with his foot and, not loosening his hold on Sam, kicks around until he finds the leaning hole that used to be its door.

Dean hurls them both inside, away from the open patches, and into the back corner. The tin above them creates shadows that are almost blinding after the vicious white brilliance outside. 

Safe? Not yet. Dean shoves Sam to his knees and gets in front of him, between Sam and the outside and the nearest hole in the tin. There isn't enough room back there for two guys their size and even as Dean squints up, the roof creaks and scrapes and dents inward from the hail's assault.

Dean licks his lips, stuffing his fear down and locking it away. "Sam, you okay?"

"I'm fine." Sam pushes his head to Dean's shoulder. His hands are clenched tight in fists, but he's shaking. "What does she want? Why is she doing this?"

God, but Dean almost forgot how young Sam really is, especially since he's been acting like a man for a while now. He protects Sam's head with his arm, not even thinking, just doing what comes natural. "I don't know, Sam. I guess she knows we're close, so she's fighting." He has to shout in Sam's ear; in here, the hail's way louder, colliding with the tin.

It's a lie that Dean's telling Sam. Partly a lie. Dean knows this isn't an ordinary angry spirit defending its bones. This is a battle with something crazy and smart at the same time, who wants to see his brother dead. She brought them down here, all right, straight into a trap. And Dean fell for it. _My fault,_ he echoes what she said. _Dammit, Dean!_

The quickest ever flash of huge, frightened brown eyes flash before Dean's, startling him into jumping back and clutching Sam tighter. 

If she was human, he'd wring her neck. "That the best you can do?" he hollers, reckless with anger, hating his helplessness. All he can do is shield Sam and that won't work forever. "You want a fight, huh? Bring it! Show yourself! Take me if you want to, if that'll stop this, but you stay away from him. You hear me? As long as I'm alive you're not getting him!"

The ghost wails, shrill, cold. Wind shatters through the twisted remains of what was once a window, knocking out rotten scraps of wood, sending fragments of sharp-edged glass flying. Sam bites off a yelp, flinching. Two half-seconds after that, Sam goes stiff and buries his face in Dean's shoulder, biting down on Dean's jacket; he still can't swallow the howl of pain. 

"Sam?" Dean strikes him, fist hard to Sam's arm. "Sam, what'd she do to you?"

Sam shakes his head, quiet now, otherwise as still as if he's dead. Baffled and terrified, Dean sweeps the length of Sam's body, searching for he doesn't know what, a spear of glass or a broken bone from a big hailstone -- _oh, no, no, no_ \-- he sees it. Sam pushed his leg out at a weird angle when the glass scored off him, and now the limb's rigid, foot jerking at the end, a visible spasm of knotting muscle hard and twitching under the ripped-open denim and the blood on Sam's leg where a shard of glass must have hit.

Dean's heart squeezes down tight as gritted teeth. Fuck. How bad does that hurt? He can't even imagine, and Dean can imagine a lot. He can't help Sam. Can't get down there and help Sam flex his leg, can't rub away the seizure in the muscle; if Dean lets go even for a second he leaves Sam vulnerable and if the hail gets Dean in the head, they're both done for. All he can do is try and shield Sam's head with his arms, which'll be useless soon -- the tin's about to go -- and he _hates_ it.

Sam shudders hard. "We're gonna die, aren't we?"

" _No._ " Dean says, teeth grinding together from the vicious cold, the fear and the refusal to let her win this. 

Sam says this next in the smallest voice Dean's ever heard from him, even when Sam was a baby, "I wish Dad was here."

He's scared. Dean knows that's what made Sam say it. Be damned if he'll let it stand, though, be damned! Dean hauls Sam tight as he can to him and shakes him roughly, shouting at the top of his lungs, "Don't you ever say that again. I'll take care of you better than Dad ever did. I am doing a better job! She's not gonna win, Sam. I won't let her."

Sam burrows into Dean, hanging on for dear life; he nods once, a determined jerk of his head. Sam's foot kicks almost like it's independent of his leg. He's losing a lot of blood from the glass, devil's red tears rolling down to puddle on the shanty floor.

 _I hate you, Dad,_ Dean thinks, closing his eyes tight and holding on. _I fucking hate you for putting us in this._

"Hushabye," the ghost whispers at Dean's side, back without any warning. He's wound up too tight to flinch. All he can do is hate. 

The wisps of air she uses for fingers, cold in a different way, waft uselessly through his hair; he feels a tug as if she wants to cradle his head on her breast. "I hate him too," she croons, sing-song. "He went away and left us. Promised he'd be back, but he never came." She kisses his cheek, a stinging bite of frost. "I'm so sorry, sweet, I tried, I did. Lie still, my love, it'll be over soon. Mother will take care of you, you'll see."

Dean summons up all the might he has to spare and pushes at her; it accomplishes nothing but at least he tried. "You're. Not. My. Mom," he snarls. "Her name was Mary. She was pretty and she said she'd always be there, and she gave me this --" He makes a fist with the hand he wears his silver ring on.

"You still have my brother's ring," she murmurs, stroking the silver. "It's for your own son, remember? You promised me."

Dean refuses to listen. He can't. He won't. " _My_ mom gave this to me, and she died. And then Dad went away, and Sam's all I have left. Kill me if you want, but I won't leave him. I'll protect him until I'm dead, do you hear me? Do you?" 

"You _are_ dead," the ghost mourns, blanketing the side of Dean's face with her chill. He's nauseated to think she must be pressing her cheek to his. "We both died, love. He's killed us both. But I still love you, sweet, don't cry. Hushabye, now, hush. Shall I sing to you?"

"No." _I'm not dead,_ Dean swears to himself, stomping down the new rise of panic and the _what if, what if_ that'll end him if he lets it. He's not dead, and neither is Sam. He won't let that be.

Dean damns his father for this with the blackest corners of his heart expelling splinter-sharp through his mind. 

"Ohh. Such hate," the ghost murmurs, slipping a blanket of cold around Dean. The sound of the hail gets muffled, as if she's covering his ears. "You never met your father, lovey, just bad men, bad men…" 

A picture of John Winchester crystallizes in Dean's thoughts. Dad standing over a grave Dean dug for him, from sundown almost to sunup, twelve years old and hurting from head to toe, his hands raw from the shovel. Dad lit up by fire as the bones, salt and accelerant burn high. 

"Who are you thinking of, sweet, to make you so unhappy?" The ghost flickers through Dean's head, shivery fingers sifting through his thoughts.

Dean laughs without humor. "My dad."

"Your --" The ghost hisses, drawing back sharply. " _Him._ "

"Wait. What? You know my dad?" Dean jerks his head around, forgetting she isn't "there" to stare at. 

And he sees her. 

Small, dark hair tangled in knots, skinny as a twisted willow branch, smeared with mud and blood, the tattered ends of a leather thong necklace still hanging from her throat. Her eyes open impossibly wide before she covers her face with her arms, screaming into her flesh.

She flickers out of sight, flashing negative shadows three times, and disappears.

Sudden silence almost deafens Dean. 

The hail stops.

They're still alive.


	21. Chapter 21

_They're still alive._

***

Dean lies still for a long moment, one that seems not to have any seconds in it. As if the second hands on a watch would have stood still between when the ghost -- he _saw_ her -- and before he takes his next breath. The temperature's plummeted to freezing, there's an ocean of hailstones to cross, some the size of bird eggs, and God knows how bad Sammy's hurt.

But _they're alive_. She's gone. For now and only for now, sure. That's okay. He and Sam might be battered and might be bruised and might be bleeding, but -- _alive_.

Sam shifts uneasily, his head still mashed to Dean's chest and his nose nearly in Dean's pit. "Seriously. What's funny?" he asks, muffled by Dean's shirt. 

Dean realizes he was laughing when he stops. He lets go of his hold on Sam, his joints creaky and his arm stiff. "Nothing. Just lost it for a second there." Before this whole hunt, Dean doesn't think he'd ever have admitted it. He couldn't have let Dad down this way, not by going cuckoo or by owning up to slipping gears.

Sam, though, Sam gets the freak-outs. Dean never knew how good it was to have someone who understood and might make fun but won't think less of him. 

He rubs the back of Sam's head. "How bad are you hurt?" Can't be as nasty as he'd thought before, or Sam would have let himself scream again, for real and out loud, as soon as the ghost disappeared.

Dean takes a look. He winces. There's a shard of glass, trapezoid-shaped, sticking out of the back of Sam's calf. Lots of blood, staining Sam's jeans a wet, dark red. Still. The way Sam kicked around, Dean wondered for a crazy minute if he'd lost the foot or worse. Everything's attached, if messy.

Sam digs his fingers in Dean's shirt, gripping and releasing. He keeps his head tucked down as he admits, sounding embarrassed. "Cramp. When the glass cut me, I guess I went way tense or something. Just a stupid leg cramp."

"You've got to be kidding." Dean thumps his head against the still-standing wall of the shanty. "Fuck me sideways, dude, you scared ten years offa me."

"Sorry," Sam mumbles.

"Don't be." Dean prods Sam, jostling his head. "You did good. Kept quiet, didn't panic, didn't make it worse by flailing around."

Sam looks up at that. Still scared, hesitant, but there's a kind of dawning relief mixed with happiness. Happiness in this middle of this mess. "Yeah?"

Dean gives in to the urge and lets himself push the hair off Sam's forehead. "Uh-huh. Proud of you."

Sam's smile breaks out, wide and white. "Cool."

"Don't get mushy on me." Dean flicks the top of Sam's head with his finger and thumb. He pries Sam loose as carefully as he can, trying not to jostle Sam's leg. "So how good are you at cussing these days?"

"Guess we're about to find out." Sam knows, without being told, that Dean's taking care of business and the glass has to come out. "We don't have anything with us for stitches. Or a tourniquet."

"Wuss. It's not _that_ bad." Dean crawls perpendicular to Sam and takes a few seconds to assess the injury. The glass went in deep, but it looks to be a solid piece, and it's not too wide across. "Walking won't be any fun for a while."

"Hasn't been for a few days, now." You could bleach bones on Sam's tone; it's like the Sahara, it's so dry. "Get it done."

"Think of the worst thing you can imagine saying," Dean instructs Sam, using his silver knife to open the rip in Sam's jeans a little more and give himself room to see what he's doing. Sam shivers at the cold touch of the silver but doesn't move any further. "Really rev it up, dude, let me hear you. On my count. One, two, three --"

Sam's silent as the grave when Dean pulls the glass out, a bigger chunk than he'd thought. Way bigger. "Jesus, Sam, I'm sorry --"

"S'okay." Sam grits out, fists white-knuckled by his sides. He breathes in rough, ragged chops. "How bad?"

Bad enough to need those stitches if you ask Dean, but like Sam said they're so out of luck there. Dean decides that in the future, no matter where he goes, he's carrying everything he might ever need with him. Used to be that meant nothing more than a condom and some charm. And a gun. Now he thinks he might want to look into cargo pants for room to store all he wants to keep at hand.

"It's nasty, Sam, not gonna lie to you. But you'll live. Look on the bright side -- you're gonna have an awesome scar."

"Terrific."

"Just… lay as still as you can." The slice leaks more blood than Dean's comfortable with. Needs some pressure and a bandage.

Dean hesitates, fingering the hem of his flannel shirt. It's all he's got for warmth and it's filthy. 

It's all he's got, period, so he doesn't have a choice. "Don't say a word about this," he warns, taking his silver knife to the flannel and cutting off three strips. "I've got enough left to keep me covered."

Sam mumbles something, probably just to be contrary. Dean lets it slide off him. Sam's all noise and drama, and underneath he's a good kid, going to be a good man. He'll learn as he gets older.

"Hey, Sam?" Dean asks. He folds the cleanest strip in a square, presses it down, and bandages tight. "You, uh… you ever think about… you know, after this, what we could…"

"Huh?"

"Nothing." Dean clears his throat. "That's about as good as I can manage right now. Think you can walk on it?"

"Probably. Can I turn over?"

"Do your worst." Dean crawls back up beside Sam and helps his brother sit up, their backs to the wall, side by side. Sam turns his head to watch Dean. Dean does the same once he's settled. Sam's gray with fatigue and grime. He smells rank. Dean figures he's in about the same shape, himself. They're still comfortable.

"It's like a foxhole, isn't it?" Sam asks.

Dean nods. "Near as makes no difference. We rest here until you're good to walk, then we get busy finding her bones fast. I think I scared her off for a while --"

"How?" Sam's face creases into a frown. "I knew it when she left, but what do you mean, _you_ scared _her_?"

"I, uh." Dean swallows. He's still icy inside, remembering what made her leave. His memory of Dad, right at the surface of his head, surrounded by hate and pain. 

"You're about to lie to me. Don't."

"Sam."

"It's not like I wouldn't be able to tell anyway," Sam points out. "Tell me."

Dean fidgets. "I thought of something she didn't like," he hedges. "Someone she knew, or thought she recognized. Someone who scared her."

Sam nods. He's briefly quiet, unmoving except for the flexing of one fist and the hand nearest Dean dropping to Dean's leg, resting there. "It was Dad, wasn't it? You thought of him -- when I said I wanted him here. Didn't you?"

Dean gives up, letting the weight fall off his shoulders. "Yeah. I think she's met him before. She said _'him'_ and ran away." He has to take a deep, deep breath and close his eyes to get this next out. "So I guess Dad's tried to hunt her before. Maybe."

Sam's surprisingly calm. "I figured he might have."

"You what, now?"

Sam raises one shoulder. "Why else would he drop us here? Now? Without what we need to survive? He didn't plan on us walking across the state. He put us right where he wants us. Sent us in to take care of her. It was a trick, Dean. Think about it. How else can you hunt something that reads minds if she knows you're after her the second you get close?"

Dean fell silent after Sam asked, no, said, it wasn't really a question, _why else_ and _now_. 

"I'm not sorry," Sam says, surprising Dean out of the blank space filling his head, white and cold as the hail. "Dean?" He thumbs over Dean's leg. "I'm glad."

Dean shakes his head, confused. "Why?"

"You really have to ask?" Sam rolls his eyes when Dean still doesn't get it. 

"You're not pissed at Dad?" Dean's seriously fumbling here.

"Idiot. Forget Dad." Sam waves his hand like he can wipe the man away. "I'm not sorry I'm here with just you. Okay?" He colors a degree toward pink. "I'd rather be with just you. I have for a long time. Shut up and don't tease me."

Dean swallows. There's a hard knot in his throat, painful to work around. Slowly, though, pushing himself that one last inch, he covers Sam's hand with his own and presses down. He's saying _I'm not gonna make fun_ and _yeah, me too_ and other things he can't so much put words to right now.

Sam bumps Dean's shoulder with his. Dean knows they understand each other.

Silence passes. "So what do we do now?" Dean asks, mindful of the chill in the air, the sun that'll wane soon, and the emptiness of his belly, already growling at him. "Find her, dig her up, salt her, burn her -- still sound like a plan to you?"

"It would." Sam snickers. "If we had a shovel."

Dean's mouth drops open. " _Fuck._ "

"Not until I can use my leg again."

Dean's only response to that is to pop Sam in the arm, as hard as he can, but he's grinning and so is Sam. None of that crazy nervous stuff, either. "Gonna hold you to that," Dean says, offering it openly between them. Not scared of this, anyway. This is what's good that he's got. He wants to keep it and screw anyone who says they shouldn't. Sam's his. He's Sam's. They're what they can be, every bit of it, and it's worth keeping. Worth fighting for.

"Good." Sam nudges closer to Dean and drops his head, butting Dean's. "I think I know what to do. Maybe."

"If you've got any bright ideas, I'd love to hear 'em."

"There's too much going on with her. The coins, the mind games, the weather… I don't think just burning her bones is going to do it. Or even melting the coins, too. She's got stronger ties here than those. We have to know what they are. What her weak spot is."

Dean's good humor starts to melt. "What are you saying?"

Sam tilts his head, chin jabbing Dean, and looks him right in the eye. "I think you need to fall asleep, Dean. Dream. Let her in all the way, and find out what she wants. Why she's doing this. Everything." He won't look away. "If we want to finish her, first we have to let her take you."


	22. Chapter 22

"No." Dean recoils from Sam. "You want me to _let her in my head_? No way. Bad idea, Sam. Not gonna happen."

Sam sits still, feet among the hailstones and head propped on the half-burned shanty wall, most of him in shadow. There's barely enough of the disappearing afternoon light, still shrouded behind its dense cloud cover, to see him by. "It's the only way."

"That you can think of right now, you mean." Dean pushes away from Sam and stands, wrapping his arms around his chest to stave off the cold that hits him afresh as soon as he's away from Sam's body heat. 

"And? Can you come up with anything better before the sun goes down?" Sam points, jabbing his forefinger, the nail split, to one of the holes in the shanty's rusted tin roof. "We're out of choices, Dean. We don't have food, we only have a little water, there's ice everywhere, we're exposed to the elements, and we're exhausted." Sam pinches the top of his nose and squeezes his eyes shut. "We didn't think about a shovel until now. We didn't bring the salt. We don't even have the lighter, do we?"

The understanding goes down like ice cubes swallowed whole. Again she did it. Again. Dean didn't even _think_ \--

"You see it now? She walked us right into a trap. Checkmate." Sam exhales and thuds his head back against the wall. 

Dean shakes his head numbly. Yeah, he'd wondered why she wanted him down here, why she'd shown him the way, hadn't he? _Guess now I know. This is where she's gonna launch her biggest attack -- or another one, soon, since the hail went bust._

Sam picks up one of the hailstones and cups it in his palm, squeezing the ice. "If we're even here. If I'm even here or even real, or --"

"Sam, don't _say_ shit like that."

"Why not? It might be true. Dean, for all you know you fell asleep before the car drove away and you've been lying in a ditch ever since then --"

"Sam --" Dean's heart races too fast; his chest burns. "That can't be what's going on. I swear it can't. You have to believe me."

"Why?"

 _Because I never dreamed about **you** ,_ Dean thinks. _Not like **this**. Not with you saying my name like you're dying, or the hand jobs and the mouths and, and, and hope. I don't dream for myself. Not ever. You're the only one stubborn enough to hope. And fuck it all, this makes me happy. So that's all you. That's how I know this is real._

Dean's silence has gone on long enough for Sam to rustle up new arguments. 

"If this is about protecting me, then you have to stop."

"Excuse me?" Dean can't believe his ears.

Too late; Sam's off on a rant. "I think you still think you have to take care of everything. You're still trying to be perfect, Dean, trying to keep me one hundred percent safe _while_ going after her _yourself_ , and it's never going to happen because you're only one man, you're human, and nobody human is perfect. No one."

 _Mom was,_ thinks Dean. Out loud, he bristles and says, "I'm doing what I have to. So that's not enough for you now? Sorry for trying to keep us both alive, asshat." 

Sam curls his lip. He picks up another of the hailstones, a heftier size, and wings it sharply out the broken-down door of the shanty. It hits a decent distance away with a _crack_.

"Oh, that's great, dude." Dean smacks Sam's hand, leaving a fast-fading imprint of his fingers. "Wanna toss something else? 'Cause you throwing random shit around always leads to the good times."

Sam ignores him, too bent on fighting, circling back around to his main point. "Dean, we don't have a prayer unless you can admit that even you can't keep me safe from everything."

"I can --"

"I've got a hole in my leg that says different." 

Dean's starting to get how much he fucking hates being looked through and talked over. Bad enough when it was Dad, but this? Sam? Not gonna let it happen.

He stamps his feet, trying to keep them warm. The cold seeps in through the thickness of his soles and the boot leather, his skin growing uncomfortably numb. "We've got an hour, maybe two. Give me a chance, and I know I can think of something to fight her off before then."

Sam's hands fall to his sides, empty of ice to throw. "We can't take the chance she won't try again before then. We have to act fast."

"So you want me to just lay my head down on the chopping block? The hell you say." 

Sam never gives up. Never knows when to quit. "You're not getting it, are you? Nothing in here is guaranteed to be real. Not me. Not the hail, not the snakes, not even these --" He digs in his pocket and comes out with a handful of silver dimes and hurls them in a wide arc, small flashes of silver fire that shine too brightly before they're lost among the ice. "Silver pierced with holes is for luck, right? Wrong. You make your own luck, Dean, and either you act now or we're both going to die before the sun comes up tomorrow."

Dean clenches his jaw and says nothing.

"You know we'll fall asleep sometime, and she'll come after you once you're out, so why not go in after her first? I'm not telling you, Dean," Sam says quietly. "I'm asking. Okay?"

"Sam, I don't know…"

"Sit with me." Sam puts his hand on Dean's ankle right above the boot. His skin is warm. 

Dean's exhausted, wavering on his feet, fucking freezing. This is a bad idea, as bad as they get.

He sits.

"Dean --" Sam draws one knee up, propping his chin on the bony knob. Frayed denim strings tickle his cheeks. He shrugs. Dean can see the helplessness and the fear hiding not-so-well in Sam's façade of calm. Doesn't change what Sam's trying to do: lay Dean out as a sacrifice.

That's what Dad would do. Dean can't handle it coming from Sam.

"I don't get it. I thought we -- Sam, I thought you -- that this was different --"

"I do. I am." Sam reaches for Dean, quicker than Dean would have anticipated, and kisses him, all chapped lips and awkward gentleness. "I'm sure this is the answer."

Dean bites down on the soft meat on the inside of his cheek and turns his face away. "You're crazy."

"Maybe." Sam tugs at Dean's leg. "Dean? Look at me. I'm not like Dad. You know I'm not. I haven't ever lied to you. Not once. I've been here every minute of this hunt. I've listened to you. I've done what you asked, when I can. I've tried to help."

Dean shakes his head, silent. He can't deny it, any of what Sam says. But to leave Sam here by himself, where anything could happen…

"It puts you at risk, Sam. I can't take that risk. I don't want to." Dean finds a hole in the knee of his jeans and jerks viciously at the loose threads. They catch and snare on the calluses he's earned from hunting, shooting, putting things away. He's supposed to be good at this. "Don't make me leave you here."

Sam tugs Dean closer, like he's laying a claim, and maybe he is. "I don't want her to kill you."

"She wouldn't. She likes me, who knows why. You're the one whose head she's after."

"I know. But if she kills me because we didn't stop her first, what'll that do to you?"

The question is simple, and it knocks the breath out of Dean. He shudders hard, teeth clacking together as his mouth shuts on a _snap_. 

"Dream on purpose," Sam presses. "Let her know you made the choice. Take control right from the start. Find out what she wants. _Talk_ to her. And if she fights? Use Dad against her. She's afraid of him. You -- we -- need to know why."

"Talk. To a ghost."

"That's all some of them want. To have someone hear what they're saying." Sam kicks a hailstone, the quarter-sized ball of ice bouncing off dozens of others like it or bigger. "I did. Wanted you to hear me. Wasn't it what you wanted, too? From me, from Dad?"

"Sam…" 

"If you really want to keep me safe? Then attack before she gets another chance. You're strong enough. I know it. And I won't fall asleep, Dean. She screwed up. No way I can sleep without painkillers, believe me." Sam sounds grim as death itself. "And I won't let you go too far. I'll be right here, waiting with you. If anything happens, I'll wake you up. I promise."

Dean closes his eyes.

"I won't leave you, Dean. Not ever." Sam tugs at Dean, pulling him over until Dean's head can rest on his shoulder. "You're my brother, and I--" He clears his throat. "You're my brother."

There's a knot tied in Dean's voice box, choking him quiet. He wraps his hand in the tail of Sam's shirt and jerks it tight. _Yeah. You too._

"We're going to try it my way," Sam says. "Okay?"

It almost kills Dean to nod his agreement, because he hates even taking the smallest chance of leaving Sam vulnerable, but damn it all, he knows Sam's right. He has to take the fight to her or stay stuck in one place, defending himself, until she wears them both down.

He nods bitterly, swallowing down his anger and shame. They taste like lye and ash.

Closing his eyes, Dean rests his head on the shanty wall. Something light brushes the top of Dean's head. Sam's petting him like a damn dog. He'd object, he would… but it feels good, even if Sam's clumsy at it. 

"I heard what you said before," Sam says out of nowhere, shuffling so Dean can get as comfortable as possible. Dean falls into the spaces Sam opens, finally half-lying across him, eyes still shut to the weak, waning sun. He isn't cold anymore -- he's almost warm, and Sam's solid as a brick wall to rest himself on.

Sleep's closing in on him, thick black velvet curtains drawing closed. It's a strange kind of exhaustion, more like what people who've almost frozen to death talk about rather than dozing off. 

"Dean? I said I heard you, before."

Dean twitches, asking the question without saying a word. _Huh?_

"I heard what you said about what'll happen after all this is over. What you and me could do." Sam sifts Dean's hair through his fingers, scratching and stroking. "I want us to find our own place, our own life. Without Dad or anyone else who'll look at us and say we're wrong, or try and separate us." He brushes Dean's lips with his thumb, clumsy-bashful. "It's what I want 'after'. Do you?"

Dean's too far gone to answer Sam, but the words kindle up a warmth inside him. He nudges Sam, barely-there, but enough for Sam to take as an answer.

"Then trust me. Okay? I've got your back," Sam says, as Dean slides away. "Always."

***

Dean knows he's asleep. He's lost in absolute darkness and the freezing cold. Listening carefully, he can hear -- as if it's a long ways off -- a soft weeping, and snatches of Appalachian melody.

 _I'm here,_ he tries to tell her. _You want to talk to me? Talk._

The song stops. There's a strange hesitation to the nothingness now, as if the ghost's heard Dean, but isn't sure she believes him.

_All I want are some answers. Okay?_

The pause elongates.

With nothing to lose, Dean goes for broke. _Who are you? Why are you looking for your son? Why do you want to hurt Sam? I have to understand._

The silence quickens.

_Please. Tell me what happened to you._

A hush, a hiss, a sigh --

Light, bright yellow light, bursts out of nowhere, enveloping Dean in sun's heat, so harsh after the darkness that Dean has to shade his eyes against the golden world of the ghost's dreams. His surroundings seem different now, realer, sharp around the edges. Too bright. Like scrying pictures in a fire.

A woman in a pretty white dress twirls past, startling Dean into falling back on his ass. She's pretty, her hair smooth and dark as whiskey -- daisies stuck behind her ears -- and her eyes as wide and brown as sweet clover honey. Her legs are bare, and so are her feet. She laughs, turning in a circle, and bends to catch a knee-high toddler and swing him in the air.

Dean recognizes the woman when she wheels around, so alive, so happy. He sees the string of lucky dimes with one quarter as the pendant around her neck.

Sam was right. She wanted someone to hear her. But she's not telling him her story. She's showing him. Making him live through what happened to her as she relives it. 

He'll see her die in this dream, but for Dean's part, he wants to live. Put her to rest and get out. He's got stuff he never imagined losing on the line.

He puts his trust in Sam to watch out for him and follows the dream, losing himself in the light.


	23. Chapter 23

Dean can't take his eyes off the pretty woman and her son. Jesus. _This_ is who she was, before she died?

Before he can ask her, though, the ghost makes sure to tell Dean she's running this show, not him. Her presence is far colder in comparison to the lazy warmth of the day when she pokes him in the middle of his back. 

Dean gets the message: _stay here. Watch. Listen._

To get her point across, Dean guesses, when he tries to look away she's ready for him and the damndest thing happens -- even if he's tilting his head toward the sky, he can still see the woman and her kid playing in the green, green grass below as if he's looking at them on the level.

"Okay, okay, calm down," Dean gripes, settling in. The ghost seems okay with his sitting down. The blades of grass Dean sits on don't bend as he crosses his legs tailor-style with his arms draped over his knees. It's the creepiest-ass feeling in the world. Here, in this dream of hers, he's as much of a ghost as she is in the real world.

Dean rolls his shoulders, itchy at being helpless. Still, he's here, Sam knows what he's doing -- Dean hopes -- and he'll see it through.

He watches the ghost, the woman she was, and her son, playing in the tall, thick grass. 

"Gonna get you! Gonna get you!" the boy squeals, tackling his mother. 

The woman makes a big show out of being taken down, but she's smart enough to snatch her son out of the way. She holds him over her, stronger than she looks, "flying" him while he shrieks those little-kid giggles and flails his arms and legs. A strong smell of sunshine and herbs and something almost but not exactly like vanilla reaches Dean's nose. He sniffs curiously, thinking this might be sweetgrass they're rolling around in, crushing beneath their weight.

Dean tries to look around to get a sense of where they are, and when. The ghost lets him do this, so he figures she wants him to know. "When" is still a mystery when he's done, but from the looks of the forest line, not as thick but much greener and full of life, Dean knows he's where he "started". There's no one else around as far as he can see in either direction, and there's a sense of quiet that makes Dean think hardly anyone ever comes here.

Okay, then.

"Rest now, sweetling," the woman tells her son. The sound of her voice drags Dean's attention back to her, _snap_ , like a rubber band popping. She's put her kid down and sat up, legs tucked beneath the skirt of her white dress, but not so far that Dean can't see her feet are bare, and the kind of hard gray callused on the bottom that tells him if she's ever worn shoes, it hasn't been often.

"Aw, momma," the kid whines.

The woman -- Dean wishes, abruptly, that he knew her name -- plucks one of the daisies from her hair and tickles her son's nose with the broken stem. "Hush, hush. It'll be lunchtime soon."

Around noon, then? Corresponds well enough with the height of the sun and its warmth. Dean reckons that puts them around midsummer, or maybe even August, unless they're having a heat wave.

Dean props his chin on his hand and watches, slightly weirded out at how he's not weirded out at all by lazing around in a ghost's dream. _Dunno, maybe it's that this is different,_ he tries to reason. _It's peaceful here. Happy._

Granted, Dean knows how it's all gonna end, and it won't be with daisies and sunshine for damn sure. That thought puts a little more creepiness back in Dean's head, re-sharpening his mind.

The woman gathers her son on her lap and studies his face. His cheeks are smudged with dirt, and man, who can keep from laughing when she spits on her finger and tries to wipe him clean?

Still… this is great, quiet, cozy, whatever, which means it's all way too good. More, now that Dean's reminded himself of the ghost and just how whacked-out she is now, he thinks he sees something weird about the woman when she was alive.

Dean's lost as to what it might be until she glances up and he gets a straight look at her eyes, how hazy and faraway her line of sight seems to be, and it clicks. _Gotcha._

She was as batshit crazy alive as she is dead. _Terrific. Wonder if she accidentally killed her kid?_

Dean studies her as the little boy reaches up to pat his mother's cheek. "Momma, come back," he calls, letting Dean know this isn't the first time she'd zoned out.

The woman blinks. "Thank you, love." And just like that, she's back, tickling her son's belly until he screeches.

Okay, so maybe not totally batshit. But different. Touched in the head. Was she born that way, did she get hurt, or something else? No way for Dean to tell. Still, the more he looks at her, the more Dean thinks Sam would call her something like a mystic. Uncle Bobby -- _jeez, haven't seen him in years_ \-- would call her -- what would he call her now? 

A seer, Dean remembers. She looks past what is to what could be. He can hear Uncle Bobby, or just plain Bobby as he wants to be called now they're both old enough, drawling on about women like this one: "A look like that? Psychic, I'd bet, and not a clue how to handle herself. Risky to be that way in older times. Not much safer now. Mor'n likely, if someone ain't trained, it'll have already driven 'em unbalanced. Sad, but that's how it is. Folk can either go crazy-dangerous or simple as children. If they're like that, in the one case you leave 'em be. Otherwise, you lend a hand where you can and make sure they don't take it into their heads to start killing."

Makes sense. She had some gifts before she died, probably got a big boost to them as an angry spirit, and that's how she can mess with him and Sam so easy.

But that means she, this woman, she might have a grown body but she's just a kid where it counts. Innocent. _Dammit._

Dean flinches, damn near twitching forward. No pain, but a push like someone just jabbed him with the blunt end of an arrow.

He blinks, and when he opens his eyes he's looking across a patch of rubble and hail at his own body, pulled flush to Sam's. Dean wouldn't want to be the man who goes up against the grim determination he can see written all over Sam's face.

 _Snap_ goes the rubber band, and Dean's back, cold air steam-kettle whistling on his neck.

"It wasn't me," he grumbles, resisting the urge to uselessly try and shrug her off. "I'm still here. Waiting for whatever."

Dean senses her displeasure, but she settles. He keeps watching.

The woman's son plays with some rocks at her feet while she braids daisies and clover weeds into a chain. The little guy makes his rocks "gallop" and whinny instead of trying for car or plane noises, which tells Dean more about when this happened. 

Cute kid. Damn shame. Dean would want to protect him, to try and save him, but this isn't real. Just a memory, sent by a ghost. Doesn't get much un-realer than that. 

Still, it sucks. _How old is this little guy -- three, four, five? Hard to say._ Dean thinks he's smaller than he should be, kinda stunted, and he's skinny. _Ten'll get you twenty he doesn't get enough to eat way up back out here. She probably doesn't, either. Not wearing a wedding band, which means there's no Dad bringing home food._

Truth be told, Dean's starting to feel _sorry_ for her, and that's so many different kinds of crazy he shakes it off fast. Tries to, anyway.

Daisy chain draped atop her head, the woman cuddles down in the bruised sweetgrass with her son, who Dean learns now is named "Joseph", or "Joey". Nice name. However old he is, it's old enough to answer his mother when she speaks and understand what she's saying.

Dean chuckles as he listens to the woman start in on some tall tales. _Storytime, huh?_ He used to do this with Sam. Get him good and worn out by running around playing, then make sure he fell asleep by lulling him down with a worn-out Dr. Seuss or something.

The woman's stories are a lot more colorful than Seuss. Dean's too old for this, sure, but he finds himself actually enjoying the listening. She's not bad at this. Adds a lot of color and spice, raising her voice higher than high for ladies and lower than low for men, and downright scary-deep for monsters.

Mostly, sounds like she's telling Joey stories about his Uncle Saul, who to hear her tell it sounds like Davy Crockett, General Custer and Evil Knievel rolled up into one, especially when she hits one where Uncle Saul caught a grizzly bear and wrestled it with his own two hands until it promised it'd cry uncle, and then he killed it. To hear her tell the stories, Uncle Saul never shows mercy and never takes "I'm sorry, I promise I won't do it again" for an answer. He smites the wicked and he stomps down the bad guys and he sleeps like an angel at night.

Dean's not too sure he'd like this Uncle Saul guy if he met him. But from the look in her eyes, sad and grieving, he thinks this Saul is maybe dead.

Joey thinks different, the light of hero-worship burning in his face. "Another one, Momma. Please? Tell me about when Uncle Saul shot at the sky and made it rain, or the time he played a penny whistle all night to win a bet with the goblins, or, or --"

"Shh, love." The woman's slipped away again. She squeezes her eyes shut, and when she ducks her head, Dean hears it, something he hadn't expected at all: the shrill, ear-blasting bellow of a baby crying. At first, Dean's confused, thinking he's about to go back to when Joey was born.

He's wrong. The woman looks up, her mouth set in a tight line, and stands, taking Joey by the hand. Her white dress is stained wet over her boobs, milk leaking everywhere. Dean looks away, deeply embarrassed, and thank God the ghost lets him because that's just too private, even if she wants him to see everything else.

"Your brother's hungry," the woman says, clipped and short. She tugs Joey's hand, prodding him into a near-run by her side. "We'd better take care of him."

Dean loses track for a minute there. When he comes to, he's inside. The clapboard walls around him in the single room, even though they're unburned and not too old, and the smothering-hot tin roof overhead, tell him they're in the shanty where in the here-and-now he and Sam have been driven to ground.

Dean's confused. Remembering that, he should hate the ghost same as ever, but… something's wrong with him, has to be. You don't feel sorry for the monsters. You end them. Period.

He's crouched at the foot of a bed -- well, no, not a real bed, more like a big stuffed bag in the shape of a mattress, laid out on the dirt floor. The stuffing inside crackles and releases the faintest whiff of sweetgrass as the woman sits, picking up a fat bundle of patchwork quilt that wriggles and squalls. It's darker in here, almost blinding him again, and hot, stuffy, the propped-open door doing just about nothing to draw in any fresh air.

The woman tosses her necklace behind her, dimes jingling and the pendant quarter landing with a thump on her skin, and opens the top of her dress. Dean's not usually shy when it comes to breasts, but this here, this isn't something Dean's comfortable watching, though he's not sure why. It's natural. Kid's gotta eat. He even used to sit with Mom when she fed baby Sammy. And the ghost doesn't mind -- hell, won't let him look away this time. Still, it bugs Dean deep down inside and revs up his damped-down temper.

Left without a choice, Dean shuffles his feet, clears his throat, and endures the humiliated burning in his ears. He tries to look anywhere but at the baby latching on, and finds he _can_ look up at the woman's face.

 _Whoa._ The woman doesn't have one-quarter of the smile she had for Joey to give this kid. Far from it. She stares at him, grim and pinched, looking at him like she sees through him -- and this baby scares her. Dean knows the look of fear when he sees it.

Something else occurs to Dean as he listens to the baby slobbering her milk down: the woman's eyes are as big as they seem because she's thin as a rail, skinnier than Joey who's got at least a little puppy fat going for him. But they're both too scrawny to be healthy, whereas the baby's as fatty as a slab of bacon. 

How old is he? Again, Dean can't tell, mostly 'cause he can't get a look at the rugrat all wrapped up in his quilt, and in the much dimmer light inside the shanty. He must be old enough to have at least one tooth; from the way the woman flinches and hisses every so often, she's getting bitten. She doesn't let go of him, though, or scold him. She just keeps _staring_. 

Joey's planted himself beside the woman, watching her with a sad face. He leans up against her side, watching the baby not quite the way she does, but as if he's confused down to his bones. "Momma? Why don't you like Baby?"

The woman doesn't answer, or correct Joey with the kid's name. Maybe he doesn't have one. All she does is pet Joey and draw him close.

Dean has never been gladder of an interruption in his whole life when he hears the almighty sound of horse hooves clomping down the sweetgrass outside. They're approaching slow -- would have to have picked their way through the forest, and galloping's not an option -- so Dean has time to crane his neck and look through the propped-open door of the shanty, trying to see who's here. 

Who Dean sees is a big tall guy with a hard face and a salt-and-pepper beard, dressed well in turn-of-the-century stuff, sitting high on horseback. Nice damn horse, probably costs a lot to feed and keep. The guy himself looks like one of the kinds of preachers that Dean hates most of all, always yelling about hellfire and damnation.

Dean thinks about that, glances at the broken-minded woman and her baby behind him, and his blood runs cold as the ghost when he puts two and two together.

Joey pops up, squealing with glee. "Uncle Saul! Momma -- Uncle Saul!" 

The woman draws in a soft breath somehow different from the ones she's taken before, even though Dean knows she's heard the guy trotting his horse up. He looks back at her to see her eyes have gone that weird, thousand-yard-stare glassy again. "I know, sweet," she says, sounding as far away as whatever she's seeing. "Run and play."

Joey whoops and takes off for the outside. "Uncle Saul! Can I have a ride? Can I?"

Dean would try to follow the kid. Maybe this is it, maybe this is where he finds out what happens --

Only he doesn't, and can't, because the ghost's frigid presence behind Dean won't let him look away from the woman. She presses icy fingers to Dean's temples, forcing him to look down.

Dangling an inch or two off the ground, one of the woman's hands has fallen by her side. She's balled it up in a fist, her swollen knuckles straining white. Clenched so tight that there's fat drops of blood seeping through her fingers, dripping down to the earth, the dirt swallowing them whole. She doesn't look like it hurts her at all. Just keeps staring.

It's a different kind of fear. Dean recognizes this brand, too. This is the way a deer looks right before the arrow hits. She's prey, and she knows it. 

Saul speaks from behind them, startling Dean into a jump. "Hello, sister mine. I've come to stay a while."

The woman's lips twitch. It's nothing like a smile. "Hello, brother Saul."

"Here." A dime with a hole drilled in it lands at her bare feet; Saul must have thrown it. "Payment for my stay, sister sweet, and protection against your evil ways, my lady witch."

The woman slowly looks down at the dime. She doesn't bend to pick it up, same as she can't kick this guy out the way Dean _knows_ she's itching to do. But she hates him. She could set the world on fire, there's so much wrath blazing in her eyes.

And suddenly, more than even outside in the world where she's hunting them, as if he'd never really known what the word meant before -- even if it's not real, if he's not got anything to fear from Uncle Saul, doesn't matter -- Dean's scared, cold down to his bones scared.

Whatever else Saul might be? He's evil, and he's brought a world of trouble with him.


	24. Chapter 24

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Additional warning:** This section contains themes of non-con/domestic violence that may be very disturbing to some readers.

The time in Dean's dream stops -- starts -- shudders -- jerks forward at a rush -- slows to a crawl -- lights flash up and down, shadows passing over the sun and the sun breaking through, the shanty humming with the day zooming by around it, the floor vibrating, the walls shaking.

Dean hits his hands and his knees, head hanging, stomach reeling. He grits his teeth so he won't ask -- not even thinking about begging -- the ghost to quit it. Counting breaths to keep himself centered, Dean rides it out with the sense of gripping the second hand on a clock as it whips around and around.

The whirring rush spits Dean back out without any warning, a hard push to his back knocking him flat. He falls face in the dirt, sprawled wide-limbed and vulnerable, the breath almost jarred out of him. He sucks in deep, ignoring the pain, and inhales a head full of the strong iron smell of hard-packed earth and sweat before he chances a look up. 

It's full dusk now, a fat gibbous moon rising in the cloudless sky as it darkens from blood violet to deep black. Crickets and bullfrogs grate out asynchronies, tunes raspy as death rattles. Late-evening mosquitoes and flies buzz around the shanty door, still left standing open, probably in the hopes of a breath of fresh air that isn't gonna come.

Dean rises from the floor in a position that's good for either defense or attack, arms ready to throw punches, leg muscles bunched with energy if he needs to run. Fuck knows what crazy, unspeakable evil the ghost's brought him to see now --

Except apparently, it's dinner. Huh.

There isn't any furniture to speak of in the shanty, not even a rope frame for the woman's bed tick, and so the meal they're eating isn't laid out on a table. Saul's hauled himself up a solid chunk of log to sit on, and the woman and Joey sit in front of the hearth. Saul's got a hefty slab of jerky in one hand, cutting bites off with a knife. Joey has a wooden bowl full of some godawful mess that looks like chunks of dry bread in milk, but he seems to like it just fine, gobbling away.

The woman doesn't have anything except the pitted dirt and the hem of her white dress pulled out in a neat fan. She's wrapped a loose strip of rag cotton around the hand she punctured with her nails and keeps picking at the ragged edges, straightening and tightening it until it's as close to a perfect line as she can make it, then twitching it loose and starting all over again every time she breaks to stir a small pot hung over the fire.

Dean's mouth waters at the scent of stewed apples breaking open in the heat, just enough sugar to cut the sourness, bursting open on the tongue with a gush of sweet juice. _I suggest you eat some of that, lady, or I'm gonna see if I can._

She doesn't make a single move to feed herself. It's like, once Saul showed up, she shriveled down. Not much left of her now except nervous hands and fear and hate crawling under her skin.

The fire in the hearth burns too hot, now. Singes the hairs on Dean's neck and makes him sweat, fat drops rolling down his chest, soaking the remains of his nasty-ass shirt. 

Shame that the heat doesn't seem to bother Saul or put him off his food one little bit. The jerky doesn't have much of a smell except hickory smoke, but that's enough to make Dean's stomach growl. _Flick, flick, flick,_ and three dime-sized morsels of jerky disappear in Saul's mouth, ferried on the dark leather of what must be riding gloves.

Weird that he hasn't taken those off. _What, does he have some kind of nasty skin disease?_ Dean wouldn't cry over it if he did. Any bastard who could sit on his padded ass and stuff his hole when there's a starving lady and kids right in front of him deserves a good case of leprosy.

God, Saul yanks Dean's chains. _He's a dick,_ Dean tries to rationalize to himself. _Waste of skin._

Except Dean knows that's not all, that there's something more about Saul making his teeth itch, but he can't put his finger on exactly what.

Time skips, spinning forward. Only one sickening lurch this time, and Dean manages not to fall. When it stops, they're deeper in the night, maybe nine or ten o' clock. Dean senses Joey behind him, the soft evenness of his breathing telling him the kid's asleep. The woman sits right where Dean saw her last, though she's got the baby in her arms again, feeding him. Again. Damn, but he can eat. Messy, too, slobbering all over the place.

Saul, good ol' Saul -- _or not_ , Dean snorts -- is where Dean saw him last, ass parked on the log. He's tucked the knife in a sheath at his belt, only the hilt visible when Saul leans over to poke up the fire with a charred stick.

Saul dusts off his hands and rests them palms-up on his knees, facing the woman. "Now, sister. Tell me how you've been."

The woman ducks her head down and to the side. Her fingers tighten on the baby's quilt, then loosen; she hisses softly with pain. The ends of her makeshift bandage hang loose, not near tight enough to be any help.

"You're aware of the rules, Annie. In exchange for hearth and home, you tell me what I want to know. I've lived up to my half of the arrangement. Now it's your turn."

Annie -- so that's her name -- shakes her head. "No more." She bends away from the baby, singing broken snatches to herself. _Hang your head over, hear the wind blow…_

Saul doesn't look bothered by her telling him to back off. He smiles at Annie like it's a game between them. "Now, that's not very polite, is it?"

"No. More," Annie insists. 

"Annie."

" _Hannah._ "

"Forgive me, sister. Someone's in a temper tonight, aren't they?" Saul chuckles and rearranges his seat on the log. 

Dean hopes the bastard gets a splinter up his ass.

No such luck. Saul clicks his tongue, drowning out the sounds of slurping baby and the faint, silvery jingle of dimes as they're tugged in one fat infant fist. "Give him to me," Saul says after a moment in which the woman's silence goes on. "I'm sure you won't mind."

"He isn't done." 

"You can finish feeding him later. I want to hold him now."

Annie -- no, Hannah -- slips her forefinger between her son's lips and the sore, red circle where he's gnawed on her breast, breaking the seal. Without tucking herself away, she tightens the quilt around the kid and passes him over, not even looking, motionless as an empty puppet. 

Saul takes him without a word of thanks and holds him up to study him by the firelight. The _about-to-be-bad_ factor in the room increases by about a zillion as Saul examines the kid, tilting him to and fro to take his measure like he's a hunk of meat on a hook at the butcher shop. All of that with those of his gloves still on, the leather an unrelieved black, new-looking, not yet broken in.

"Costly leather," the woman says abruptly, fumbling her words. When he listens carefully, Dean can hear the hints of silver in her voice. This is the ghost Dean knows all too well, all right, minus the homicidal mania and the giggles. Dean guesses the one attribute comes of being an angry spirit, and the second from knowing the worst thing that could happen has already happened.

 _Damn, do I feel your pain, sister,_ Dean thinks, then stops, shocked. _Wait. Huh?_

Something cold and wet rolls down Dean's neck. The ghost hitches a quiet sob in his ear. Is she crying? Fuck. "Hey. Don't." Dean says, uncomfortable as all hell. "Come on. Don't do that."

Saul interrupts him. "I need your help tonight, Annie."

"No." Hannah flinches. She tries to cover her breasts, but she's clumsy with the bandaged hand, and her hair snarls on the coins around her neck. "Please. I'm tired."

"That's not what I'm asking for, Annie. Don't trouble yourself with defense of your questionable virtue." Saul dismisses her worries with a wave of his gloved hand. He doesn't look at her once, all his focus on the kid. "Read the cards. Throw the stones. Whatever you feel is necessary to tap through that fourth wall and get the information I need." 

"I can't --"

"Oh, we both know you can, Annie. You always did for me, once upon a time. Must I convince you? Now, indulge me. Find me a creature that needs killing, and tell me where it is, whether wolf or bloodsucker or, perhaps, a witch." 

Hannah flinches. "No."

"Annie, I am a kind man, so I'll ask you again. Find me a monster." There's a weird smirk on Saul's face that puzzles Dean. "After all, that's what I do, isn't it? I hunt the monsters, and I see that they're taken care of. I protect the future for little ones like these." 

Saul jostles the baby, but Dean hardly notices. Saul's words roll around in his head, leaving behind slick, oily trails and tangling with bits and pieces all jelling together. The horse. The knife. Monsters. _Oh, fuck._

_Saul's like Dad. He's a hunter._

_No. Not like Dad. Dad couldn't ever be this way. Could he?_

Dean, horrified, can't look away. Hannah's curled in on herself, quivering like an aspen leaf, or like she's fighting off a fit. Saul watches her, amused. A blind man could see how much this hurts Hannah, and Saul's happy as a clam. "There's a good, maleficent beast," he murmurs.

Dean's nauseated. His head throbs with too many bad things crammed in there, stuff he doesn't want to think about but can't stop. _Would Dad… did Dad ever…? Dad's gone to witches before, but he's not like **this** with them, he can't have been. And even if Dad hates witches, and he does -- oh. Oh, shit. Dad came here before us, if what Sam says is right._

_Dad came here to kill a witch. Not to lay a ghost._

_**Fuck**._

"The coast," Hannah says finally, head lolling limply on her neck. "West. Far west, at the other side. Still in the mountains and the trees. A shadowy thing that eats --" she sobs, stifling it with the back of her hand -- "that eats the flesh of men. It's horrible." Hannah looks up at Saul at last, hate open in her glare. "The greatest monster is yourself. I hate you."

"Yes, I know," Saul replies, unperturbed. "Well done."

Dean's fading. He notices it first as a sensation of weightlessness, and when he lifts his hands in a reflex to defend himself, they're almost see-through. "What are you doing?" he asks the ghost.

She makes no reply. Dean can't even feel her. "Oh, no, no, don't you leave me here. Hannah?"

No chilly air cuts the thick, choking stuffiness of the shanty. Dean's heart pounds rabbit-fast in his throat, choking him with panic. "Hannah?"

The dream Hannah, the living woman, hides her face in her hands. "Why do you do this to me?"

Saul shrugs. "Because while you are evil, and I have it on good authority that you are a favorite of the devil himself, you are useful, Annie. And you do produce pretty children. For example, this little fellow." Saul jiggles the baby. "You have such an irrational hatred for him. I often wonder why."

 _Yeah, I'll tell you why, asswipe_ , Dean thinks, furious enough even in his alarm to itch to take a swing at Saul.

Hannah shakes her head and scratches the back of her hand, white marks turning red and puffing up, tiny pinpricks of blood rising to the surface. 

"Hannah," Saul warns, "You will speak when you're spoken to. Do I make myself understood?"

Hannah nods, a jerky twist of her head that looks painful. 

Dean's almost gone in every way that counts except his eyes and his ears and his growing frenzy. What if she traps him here? Keeps him stuck in this stinking hot hellhole forever?

Fuck. What if this _is_ hell?

Saul goes on, ignorant of Dean's presence. "Very well, then. Tell me. Why don't you like Benjamin?"

Benjamin. Dean takes note of the name.

Hannah bites the back of her hand. 

"You try my patience, Annie. How is this son any different from Joseph?" Saul seems amused, dandling the baby on his knee. "Tell me the truth, now."

"Because he's evil!" Hannah bursts, ragged and scared. "There's a devil in him. I knew it when he was born. Something in him that scorches the earth, sows it with salt." 

"Salt purifies, Annie."

" _No_. Nothing purifies him. He won't wash clean, not like Joey." 

Saul tilts the baby's face to the firelight. The flickering red-and-gold reflects off both of them. "You have a very foolish mother. Did you know that?"

Now that Hannah's found her voice she uses it recklessly, speeding up, words running into each other fast and scared. "No. He's dark. I've seen the darkness. I cried when he was born." 

"What woman doesn't?"

"Not like me. I cried for the light he'd put out. And because before you planted him in me--"

 _Oh fuck._ Dean tastes the bitterness of bile. _No. Please, no._

"-- and before he grew in me, you changed," Hannah babbles on. "Called me witch instead of sweetheart. You're dark now, and dark only begets smothering dark." She reaches for the baby with one hand, her gaze glassy again. "So black inside…" she murmurs, sing-songing it. "But there's gold in him, too… gold here, and here." She touches the baby over each of his eyes. Blue eyes. 

_There's gold in him._ That's what she said to Sam. Dean remembers that. That's why she wanted to kill Sam, to quench the gold.

"Is that a fact," Saul remarks. Light as his tone is, that's how opposite and deep the darkness running through the shanty goes. Dean doesn't think anything of himself is there anymore except his sight and his hearing, all of it drowning in the deepest, darkest evil Dean's ever known, poisoning him and scaring him down to his soul.

 _Let it end,_ Dean pleads, in his head since he doesn't have a mouth anymore in this dream. _Finish this, I'm begging you._

Hannah looks up at Saul, and this time she's not hiding the hate or the desire to kill. "You think I haven't seen, but I have. I've seen the gold in you, too." She falls forward on her knees, one arm reached out to Saul. "You're not my brother, are you?"

"Aren't I?"

"You aren't. You can't be." Hannah scratches at Saul with her broken nails. "Who are you?"

Saul sits quietly, waiting for Hannah to settle. It doesn't take long. Dean can see Hannah's got no strength to fall back on, all of it sucked out of her in her milk. 

"It's a pity you crawled out of your crack-brained shell long enough to ask that," Saul remarks once she's fallen quiet. "This was really quite a satisfactory arrangement, and entertaining, too." He smirks, chilling Dean's blood as Dean watches. "Ah, well. Nothing lasts forever." 

Saul raises his hand. Dean, unseen, swears and falls backward with the force of whatever Saul's doing, and Hannah --

Hannah's lifted off her feet, tumbled backwards as if he threw her, and lands hard with her back to the wall, a cracking sound of bone. Her mouth opens wide on a silent scream. 

"Don't want to wake Benjamin now, do we?" Saul sits back and laces his hands over his stomach, grinning broad and bold. "It's been a pleasure. Goodbye, sweet Annie."

Hannah starts to slide up the wall. Dean doesn't want to look, doesn't want to, _don't wanna--_

Dean looks, and he sees it for himself. Saul's eyes are yellow.


	25. Chapter 25

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Warning:** This section contains themes of extreme domestic violence that may be very disturbing to some readers. No joking. This scene is pivotal to the plot, but it's f'd up in there.

"Son of a bitch, don't you do it," Dean breathes. "Don't you do it."

Does no good to protest. Dean can't stop this from happening. He knows he can't. And he's never _seen_ this before, not with his own eyes, but --

_"John Winchester, if you don't pull your head outta your ass I'll snap it off at the neck. Those boys need you," Bobby says._

_From where Dean's watching, peeking around the corner and way up, he can see Dad finish off the bottle Uncle Bobby didn't want to give him. He's five years old and he wanted to play with Bobby's old hound dog, but he knows better than to go around the grownups when they have beer._

_"You didn't see her, Bobby," Dad says. He sounds like he's had a bad cold, all scratchy. "On the ceiling, cut open, and then fire… it was hellfire, Bobby. I saw it all. You tell me now, how could I ever forget?"_

Saul hums a tuneless melody to himself and dandles Benjamin on his knee. Benjamin's too little for that and he squalls like a stuck pig. "Hush, now," Saul says absently, tracking Hannah's progress up the wall. "Up she goes, up she goes. There's a girl."

Hannah's mouth is open too far in her soundless scream. The corners of her mouth have cracked, chapped dry already and bleeding now. Her life's blood drips through Dean, wet and heavy.

Dean wants to look away, but he can't. He's not allowed to. And he won't. This is what she brought Dean here to see. He has to watch all of it. _Jesus._ He'd asked to see what happened to her. But he didn't this it'd be this. How could he have?

Saul tilts his head and bounces Benjamin up and down like a hobbyhorse. Benjamin's not crying anymore, more making these miserable little squeaks.

"Not everyone gets a chance to say goodbye," Saul -- no, fuck calling him that, that's the name of the man whose body he stole. He's a demon, _the_ demon, the fucking bastard _yellow-eyed demon_ , and Dean can't do a damn thing about it.

"See you around, kid." The yellow-eyed demon blows her a kiss. "Or not."

A gash, ruby red and ragged, slices itself open across Hannah's middle, where she'd have carried Benjamin. _Oh, God._ It's not like Dean had thought it would be, like he dreaded. It's worse. And he can't look away.

Hannah's mouth closes on the scream, then her lips part, scarlet drops falling from them to patter softly on the dirt floor. She still doesn't make any sound when she speaks, but Dean's staring right at that bloody mouth and he knows exactly what she's said: _Joey_!

The demon flicks his fingertips at Hannah. Hannah bursts into flames, Hannah burns, and Dean can't stop it. 

Benjamin isn't crying anymore. 

"Not bad for starters, hmm?" The demon bounces Benjamin one last time before he stands, tucking the baby underneath his arm. Benjamin dangles there, limp, as the demon walks underneath Hannah burning on the ceiling. He reaches up to catch her string of lucky dimes as the cord they're strung on breaks, the coins falling into his gloved hand. "Too bad that old charm against warding off evil doesn't work so well, hmm? Just goes to show you shouldn't put your faith in superstition."

Hannah's eyes snap open. She looks at Dean, _directly_ at Dean, and God knows how, but Dean knows she, the dying woman, sees him as if he's there in the flesh. She mouths another word, one single word. " _You_." 

She might have had more to say. Dean will never know, because that's when the flames cover Hannah completely, burying her inside them. The stink of burning flesh chokes Dean; he gags, spitting bile.

"Suppose you and I should be on our way, shouldn't we?" the demon asks Benjamin, tossing him into the air and catching him, careful of the lintel, ducking his way outside casual as if the whole place isn't coming down around them.

Benjamin's head lolls on his neck. The demon turns, Dean able to see his profile by the firelight, his smirk fading. 

Dean realizes that Benjamin's dead at the same time a wave of vicious gladness that he's dead hits. "No. Please, no," a raw voice begs, one Dean almost doesn't recognize as his own.

"That would be my luck," the demon mutters. Dean doesn't know how he can hear it above the roar of the fire and the shanty burning down, but he _can_. "Shoddy craftsmanship for something supposedly higher than the angels. It's a wonder the race has survived this long. Well. I suppose I have to start again, now. Live and learn, hmm?" He tosses Benjamin up too high, and fails to catch him on the way down, stepping out of the way. "Live and learn."

"I'll kill you," Dean swears, his throat closing up from the inside. He doesn't have a body here to run with, but he tries, he does his best to make a lunge at the demon.

Dean doesn't make it. But running past him, no, through him, a skinny kid does. Joey screams, banshee-loud, throwing himself against the demon's legs and beating at him with his small fists. There's no sense in what Joey's shrieking; it's not really words. 

Dean understands them anyway.

"Don't," he tries to say, unsteady, even though he knows Joey won't hear him. "Come on. Don't."

The demon looks down at Joey, annoyed as he'd be at a flea bite.

"No!" Dean yells, too late. The demon's kicked Joey hard as a man Saul's size can. Joey rolls and tumbles into the sweetgrass. He lies still and pale.

"I'll kill you," Dean spits, helpless to do anything but promise revenge. He understands his Dad better now, and wishes to God he didn't. "I'll kill you, I swear I will."

The demon doesn't hear him. It doesn't know he's there. "As for you," he says, nudging Benjamin with the toe of his riding boot, "I suppose you deserve a little more honor in your death. I know, I know, I'm a big old softie. Don't let it get around."

Dean can't look away. The shanty's burning, crumbling over his head, the tin roof screeching as it warps from the heat. The heat's roasting him alive. The all-consuming godforsaken _stench_ of charring human remains gags him. 

He can see, outside, the yellow-eyed demon kneeling down to dig a shallow hole. He clicks his tongue impatiently and takes off his gloves. There's a silver ring on his finger. Saul's finger. It fits Saul perfectly.

Dean knows that ring. 

_"You'll grow up sooner than you can imagine," Mary says. "And when you do, this will be yours." She helps him make a fist and holds it for a minute before opening his fingers. "This belonged to my father, and his father, and his father, and his father…"_

It's the ring Mom left him, that Dad passed to him, that's on his own finger now, wherever his body lies sleeping.

_I can't watch any more of this, I can't. Sam. Sammy, wake me up now. Please, please, wake me up. Sam?_

The dream refuses to melt away; Dean can't turn away, no matter how sick with horror.

The demon hums while he digs the shallowest hole possible, using only his hands. Saul's fingernails split and peel back, baptizing the soil with his blood. "From dust you come, and to dust you shall return," he says. "Benjamin, the child of my right hand. Shame. I think it'll be some time before another beautifully fallen angel comes along."

He stands, rubbing Saul's chin. "Well. Perhaps it's a mistake, to breed this way. Times are changing, and women just aren't what they used to be. Goodnight, sweet prince." 

The yellow-eyed demon kicks the dirt over Benjamin. The last thing Dean sees of him is his fat baby face, lips still pursed like he's suckling milk.

That's the last Dean can take. He falls to his knees and finds out that even if he doesn't have a body or a stomach in this dream, he can still throw up, or at least dry heave, the taste of bile heavy and bitter and sour tainting his mouth.

On his knees, Dean recognizes the shudder-shake of time sizzling past, timed to the sound of hoof beats receding in the distance. The dark fades to light, the sullen gray sky above promising storms when the clock stills again and Dean stops. Sickly dawn, a red sky at morning. 

Dean lifts his head, finding he has hands and knees to feel with again, soaked with frigid dew. 

Skinny wolves surround him. They won't attack, though, they've already got what they came for, dragging it away before Dean's eyes.

Behind him, he hears the ghost rise, smells the bitterness of the ashes surrounding her, and hears her first, heartbroken scream for her son.

Gold flares briefly, then gray. Dean's in the middle of the foggy nothing again, black shadows whisking past him, sizzling with anger as they go. 

Dean can't do this. He's ill, shaking and exhausted and what he just saw, no one, _no one_ should ever have to see. Ever. 

"You remember now, sweet. Joseph." The ghost brushes Dean's face with her cold, cold hand. "Your brother brought this on us."

"I'm not Joseph," Dean tries to say. He has no voice to say it with.

"Dark gold burns," Hannah whispers, riming him with frost. "I'm cold as I can be, to soothe the burn, but it never lasts. You always wither away, sweet…" Her lips touch Dean's cheek. "Always wither, but always come back again. Why did you bring him here? Cruel, so cruel."

Dean shakes his head, wordless. _Sam's not like that. You're wrong. I don't know why -- maybe because of Mom, what happened to Mom -- but Dad's not a demon, Sam's not evil --_

"I can't see him in here," Hannah murmurs, angry, then placating. "Be safe with me. Help me take care of him. Help me make him go. Until he's dead, we suffer on--"

 

Dean opens his mouth to rage at her without his voice --

" _Dean!_ " --

And he's opening his eyes to the brightness of the moon overhead through a hole in a rusted tin roof, cold and wet soaking through his jeans and his flannel shirt, ice around him and Sam holding onto him, hanging on tight, babbling his name over and over again. "Dean, God, Dean, you scared me, I tried to wake you up but you fought me this time, Dean, don't you do that again, I was wrong and I'm sorry --"

"Sammy." Dean's voice isn't more than a whisper. "Sammy, stop." He reaches for Sam, his fingers numb from lack of movement or from the cold, Dean doesn't know which. Something compresses Dean's hand; he figures it's Sam.

"I'm sorry," Sam says again, his eyes red and swollen and unashamed. "I was wrong."

"No." Dean licks his dry lips, imagining he can taste tears, ash and blood. "No. You were right."

"Dean, you --"

"Sammy, listen to me." Dean jerks his hand free of Sam's and grabs Sam by the arm. He can see Benjamin's face when he looks at Sam. He gets it, now. He understands so much and he's so much older inside, aching with the weight of this darkness on his shoulders. "You did the right thing. 'Cause now I know how to end it. If you trust me." Dean breathes in, cleansing the smell of burning with the smell of ice and Sam. "If you help me."


	26. Chapter 26

Sam blinks at Dean, so obviously taken aback that Dean would laugh if he wasn't too worn out to do more than grin. "What, you didn't think I could do it?" He pokes Sam in the chest. "I'm offended." God _damn_ , but it feels good to see someone smile, even if Sam winces and smacks him. It's only half-hearted, and his hand lays itself to rest over Dean's heart afterwards, warm in the freezing cold of the deep gray sky and sullen early morning.

"You scared me out of my mind," Sam says, looking at his hand, not at Dean's face. Hiding his eyes.

"Yeah. I know." Something breaks inside Dean's chest, some kind of wall coming down. "God. _Sam_." Dean pulls Sam down, clenching his arms tight around his brother. He needs this, and he lets himself have it, a minute to breathe, and if that means he's breathing in the dense smells Sam carries with him heavy as a cloak, so frigging much the better. 

Sam lets Dean take it. Doesn't fight. Presses his nose to Dean's collarbone; Dean figures Sam's giving himself what he needs, too. Good for both of them. He lets it go on until his hands have -- almost -- stopped shaking, until he smells more of Sam than of burning meat and ash -- almost -- until Sam's ragged breathing has drowned out the sounds of screaming and hoofbeats. 

When Dean lets Sam go, he tugs Sam's T-shirt back into place. Sam's a mess, all drying snot and tears in the dimness of the light, old man's eyes in a kid's face. He wipes his nose on the back of his hand, makes a face, and seems to breathe easier again. "Dean…" he starts, hesitant. "What happened? What did you dream about?"

Dean looks away, bitter ash in his nose and throat. _A hell of a lot is what I saw. Things I don't want you to know about. Things I can't -- won't -- tell you,_ is what he thinks.

What he says is, "I saw how she died. She showed me."

Sam's face wrinkles with concern. "Jesus. How bad?"

"Wasn't good." Dean wipes his hand over his nose and mouth, almost unconsciously, too late to stop himself when he notices. The earth beneath him is freezing, sharp with chips of rock, and he can't wait any longer. "Help me up."

"Are you crazy? No! You can't get up yet."

"Have to. If you don't help, I'll do it on my own."

"Dean --" Sam's lips clamp shut. He sits back on his heels. Dean gets how to interpret him now. He's not being stubborn for the sake of being stubborn. He's worried sick. About Dean.

Dean wonders, briefly, just how bad he must look right now. Hell. Doesn't matter. "You gonna give me a hand now?"

Sam's chin juts out as he shakes his head, but he stands with only a small wince at the pull on his wounded leg, and holds his hand out for Dean to take.

Dean grasps his brother by the hand and lets Sam pull him to his feet. He doesn't overbalance so that he falls slightly against Sam, but leans into him and does this on purpose: he shoves his fingers through Sam's hair, the sweat-crusted curls tangled and fighting him, and pulls Sam down to him. Sam's surprised by what Dean wants and their teeth clack together, a jarring that draws a hiss from both.

 _You're my brother,_ Dean thinks, pressing his mouth to Sam's. _More than, but that's enough, and I don't care. You're not like what I saw, and whatever you've got in you, you're not ending up like Benjamin. I'm not gonna go out like Joey. I'm swearing that on my own life. I'll take care of you, Sam. Always._

"Yeah, you too," Sam says, rush of warm air in Dean's mouth, on his lips, Sam's hands hovering around Dean's waist before settling on his hips, fingers splayed wide and grasping him firmly. 

"I said that out loud?"

Sam half-laughs; Dean's face tingles from the change in temperature from Sam's close body heat. "Yep."

Dean thinks, for maybe a second, about being embarrassed before discarding any shame with a _screw that_. He licks Sam's lips, cleaning off traces of salt and the faint coppery tang of blood. Washes him clean.

God, he'd love to stay here forever, but he can't. They have work to do. And later… later's later; they'll take care of the rest then.

"I told you I knew how to take care of this. We need to do it now." Dean studies Sam and he's fierce about what he sees there. Sam's his. Now more than ever, because history won't repeat itself. He won't let it. And it starts with laying this ghost -- Hannah -- to rest.  
"You with me?"

The right side of Sam's mouth lifts. "Try and get rid of me."

"No way in hell."

Sam's grin widens. "Okay." Then, it fades and he bites the inside of his cheek. "It's worse than what you're telling me, isn't it?"

Dean falters. He licks his lips, rough on the dry skin. "Sam, please don't ask me that. Okay?"

"No." Sam shakes his head. "Don't worry. I don't want to know."

So Sam can learn. But he's not done yet.

"I trust you," Sam says, simply, and Dean's floored. 

As if he knows Dean's going to be speechless, Sam leaves it there and shifts from brother to hunter, a change maybe only visible to Dean's eyes, but still there. He draws himself upright, shoulders squaring, if rounded a little from the smaller weight he carries. 

One dime slips, unnoticed by Sam but noticed by Dean, from Sam's pocket, clinking to earth and ice with a harmless chime. "Tell me what to do."

Dean stares at the coin at Sam's feet. _Oh._

Okay, that makes it different.

"Follow me. And don't ask questions. I'm thinking." Dean moves carefully past Sam, a flash of eye contact passing between them as they bump shoulders and kick aside hailstones, a moment in which Sam frowns and Dean beckons. 

Dean knows that Sam can't see Hannah. He's never been able to feel her, or to hear her. Only what she sends, like the snake, or the coins she uses to lay a trail in a silver plea for help.

Sam has no idea she's there, but Dean does. She's a cold whisper of wind at his back, hovering almost silently with tendrils wrapped around his ribs.

"Please," she croons in Dean's ear. "Let me save you."

Dean sets his jaw. "I'll take you to him."

***

With Sam walking behind him, quiet as the dawn, and the chill of Hannah between them, Dean lets himself remember and figure out where to go. What he saw in his dream. All his dreams.

Traveling in the real world is different in a hundred different ways, everything from the crumbling remains of the shanty falling down around them -- Dean's careful not to look up, now that he knows why it's so warped and twisted from heat -- to the slickly rolling, dangerous hailstones to pick through, obscuring the landscape -- but Dean knows where he's going -- and through the door, its frame charred and tilted at a crazy angle. Dean stretches his legs wide to step over the rotted lintel where Benjamin fell; Sam doesn't ask why.

Dean's seen this path twice now, although he didn't get it until Sam stood up and that last coin fell. He saw it as Saul walked it, and he saw it before, with a line of burning silver coins, thirteen of them, pointing to Sam. 

Sam, who Hannah thinks is Benjamin, same as she thinks Dean is her Joey.

Dean presses his lips firmly together and although he would give a fortune not to see it all again in his mind, he uses what he's seen to guide his steps. In the gloomy gray dawn, it's a short walk over ice and earth and tangled weeds, and no one who didn't know where Dean's heading would ever be able to see it as a path at all. But Dean knows, and that'll be all they need.

It's not far, and then they're there, the makeshift grave Dean remembers too damn well, the place where Saul -- the demon -- scratched up some earth with breaking fingernails and kicked the dirt over Benjamin's body. The sweetgrass has long since died, choked on itself. Nothing left but a heavy, impenetrable tangle that no longer smells of faint vanilla in the sun, but of decaying weeds.

Dean goes to his knees on the packed earth. He slips his silver knife out of its place in his belt and grasps the handle; it's at home in his hand. Feels right. "Sam? Be careful of yourself. Keep a watch out."

"You think she might --?" Sam asks, maybe a little unsteady, forehead furrowed with worry. Dean can't blame him.

"Maybe."

"Is what's under there what's keeping her here?" Sam nudges the snarled old sweetgrass with the toe of his boot. He shivers, turning his face to the dark gray sky. "I think I smell snow."

"Yeah. It's colder." Hannah's worried. Dean senses the difference now he knows how to read her. She claws at his shoulders, wanting him to come away. Doesn't break the skin, but the sting is no less for all that.

She might not know what this is -- she didn't see, she was already dead by then -- but it's what she's been looking for. 

The sharp silver blade of Dean's knife cuts through the sweetgrass while Sam hovers at Dean's back, watching and waiting. Dean focuses on cutting, tearing the grass in double handfuls when he's slices holes open. The nauseating stink of mold and rot clings thickly to Dean's hands, getting up his nose.

He doesn't stop. His knees ache and his hands are scored with a dozen or more grass cuts by the time he peels back the final matted layer over the dirt.

"It's over, Hannah," Dean mutters. "I'll show you. You can rest. It's okay." He tucks the knife back in his belt and starts to dig, the cold ground fighting him.

"Let me help," Sam offers, starting to go to one knee. "I'm going to help," he revises, scratching up deeper furrows of dirt than Dean's managed so far. "Dean?"

Dean wipes his forehead on the back of his arm, a slick of dirt smearing over his skin. He wants to say no. He doesn't.

Together, they dig.

At the first sight of bones, Sam rocks back on his heels fast. "Her son?" he asks. Dean would shout a warning, damn it, should have thought of that before, but too late. Hannah's heard him as well as Dean did.

The rush of her presence flickers, dwindling to a candle. Dean can see her in his mind's eye, her bitten wrist pressed to her mouth, huge scared eyes with the whites around the brown fixed on the shallow grave and the scraps of skull that are all that's left.

She quiets even more, the candle dying to a pinpoint. 

Dean shivers in the sudden absence of cold. He rubs his arms, chafing up the flannel, and twists to look behind him, around him. "Hannah?"

A hush, a pause of nothing, a breath --

All hell breaks loose. 

Hannah's scream rocks the world, tilting it on its axis; Dean doesn't know he's fallen until he's on his back in the dirt. 

_No, no, no!_

 

"This is what you wanted! Benjamin's gone," Dean shouts, trying to struggle up. "I showed you, he's gone! That's what happened to him!" The wind pins Dean's arm down when he tries to point at the shallow-dug hole in the dirt under the sweetgrass. "He can't hurt you anymore!"

Hannah draws a deep breath, sucking the air away from them with the force of her emotion -- there's a horrible silence and stillness -- Dean hopes, he hopes --

Hannah screams, and all around Dean and Sam, the hailstones explode. Shards of ice shriek past them, around them, drawing lines of blood over the backs of Dean's hands when he protects his eyes only just in time.

"Sam?" he bellows, blinded. The arrows of ice give way to harder, colder air, stealing his volume. "Sam, you hurt?"

"No," Sam returns right away, thank _God_ , or not, because when Dean looks from under his hand he can see Hannah standing over Benjamin's bones, her mouth open in the keening that has all the pain she lacked when she burned. He sees her from head to toe, from her snarled brown hair to her dress sodden with old blood and her bare, curled feet.

"What is it?" Sam shouts to be heard over the shrieking wind blasting around them. Dean wrenches over on his stomach in time to see the wind attack Sam, sending him staggering on his awkward lanky legs, falling. His hair whips over his eyes and plasters itself there, a dense curtain there's no way he can see through. "Dean! What did we do wrong?"

"I don't know!" And he doesn't. This should have been it, this should have put her to rest, why isn't she --"Tell me what's wrong!"

The wind picks up in answer, angry shrieking. The clouds above them shake and quiver, threatening to burst with the heaviness of hail and ice and snow and rain, giving birth in pain to sons of death.

"What do you want? Tell me!" Dean tries to shield his face with his arms, tries to get to Sam, fails at both. The wind's too strong, keeping them apart. Hannah's grip is tight and unforgiving and frostbitten at his waist. 

"My son," she cries in Dean's ear, pitiful, mother's mourning that won't be quenched. "Stay with me. I want my son!"

Dean opens his mouth, cracked lips parting on an argument, the corners stinging sharp as the skin breaks. He inhales, needing the air to argue with her -- inhales, and can't stop. Ice funnels down his throat, into his lungs, expanding them taut. His ribs flare with pain and his heart twists, wrenches, stuttering with fear and shock.

"Stay with me," Hannah hisses, wrenching Dean's hair back with her frozen fingers. "I won't let you go."

Dean's lips are frozen; he knows they've gone blue, that his skin's gray with no oxygen. He fights not to fall, forehead in the dirt, shocked and howling inside along with the wind and with Hannah. 

Hannah could go on. But she won't. She still hasn't found who's really keeping her here. She didn't, can't see it. Can't, won't accept it. If there's light she's put it out because she'd rather live in the dark where she doesn't have to face the truth.

They've found one son. Not two.

She wants Joey, not Benjamin, and she'll kill Dean if that's what it takes now to keep him.


	27. Chapter 27

The first thing Dean thinks about, after understanding that, is this: _no more._. She can't have him. Dean's got too much to live for.

"Dean, what's happening? Dean!"

Dean got Sam's attention, but he can only look at Hannah, twisted up, tangled up and confused. All she wants is her son and Dean's thinking fast. 

It was what she'd said, something Dean came out of his dream remembering. _Dark gold burns. Quench the fire._ She didn't see Benjamin die. Dean figured she thought he might still be out there with the darkness in him, or thought Sam was Benjamin the same way she thinks Dean is Joey, or maybe all of the above.

He'd thought leading her to Benjamin's bones would lay her to rest. Son, right? Or not. Benjamin never did a thing but be born, draw breath and suckle, but she hated him all the same as much as she hated Saul.

He'd thought Benjamin's bones were what tied her here.

_Guess I was wrong._

Hannah wouldn't stay for him, but for Joey? She loved him with as much of her head and heart as she had left. Dean knows if it was him in her place, and it was Sam on the line, nothing on hell or earth would keep him from hunting for Sam, forever if that's what it took.

So in the end it's not about Sam. Be damned. It's not about Benjamin -- not even about Saul -- it's about Joey. _Be damned._ It all comes down to Dean, and a mother who's cried too long.

Dean looks up at Hannah, knotted and thorny in her rage. Her hair's snarled over her cheeks, once-pretty curls hanging in lank tangles and her white dress smirched, her feet still bare, toes pushing through the dead sweetgrass. Above them, the sky rages, purple-black clouds twisting and roiling, ugly as death itself. 

Too bad.

"Dean?" Sam calls, as if from a distance.

Dean fists his hands, bows his head and reaches down inside himself, deep down, and remembers Mary -- Mom -- dressed in white, smelling of baby powder and milk. He draws that memory up as strong and full as he can, right to the front of his mind.

Hannah sees that thought in Dean's head, same as she sees everything. Dean paints a picture of _his_ mom for her, etching it in living color. Words aren't any good. Words twist and turn; they can mean anything and nothing and she won't _hear_ them.

But she can't deny what's in Dean's head. Hannah sees Mary through Dean's surround-sound, Technicolor, scents and sensations recollection. She flinches, fingers twitching. The animal wrath in Hannah's eyes tempers with a flicker of confusion.

Though she's still forcing the chill wind down his throat, Dean can move his mouth, and shapes his lips around the words: _My mother._

Hannah steps back, hasty, more than ever like a wounded animal. Her hand goes to her lips. The frozen air disappears, dissipates, dissolves, and Dean can breathe again. The first draw of oxygen turns his head and makes him want to fall.

He can't. He's got work to do.

Teeth gritted against the burning ache in his chest, Dean forces his legs beneath him and gets to his feet. His chest heaves as he faces Hannah down. _I'm sorry. This has to end._

She shakes her head, the fear getting stronger as it etches over her face. She doesn't know what to do with this, with her vision of Mary.

Dean's sorry for her. She's crazy and she's hurt them, and that he can't forgive, but he knows a little of what she feels like, the drive that's pushed her all these years.

"Sam, are you okay?" Dean calls, not daring to take the rest of his focus off Hannah -- but about this, he needs to be sure. "You hurt?"

"No. Are you?"

Dean doesn't answer, because there's too much that could spill out of him and he can't falter now. _Hannah, come with me,_ he thinks _at_ her, showing her a path over the dead sweetgrass. _There's something you need to see._

Hannah stares at Dean, so puzzled, so pitiful.

Dean takes the advantage in the quick second he has, reaches out -- and clasps the chilly, spectral fingers she's caressed and cozened him with all this time. He catches Hannah's hand. It solidifies, like holding the stuff that clouds look like they should feel, and he's got her. He's fucking well _got_ her.

Hannah startles at the sensation and the sight. She turns Dean's hand over, back and forth, shaking her head as she sees -- finally sees, for what it is and not the memory she's masked him with, stubbornly blinded to truth -- that it's a man's hand, a grown man's, not soft and stubby like Joey's. 

Her hair floats around her head, static with fear and confusion. She wants to get away from this, to escape and drown herself in the delusions again, and tries to pull away. Dean won't let her. _Come. Come with me,_ he coaxes. _Come with me, Hannah._

"Dean, what are you _doing_?" Sam yells.

Hannah flicks her gaze in Sam's direction. Her forehead furrows. _Benjamin?_ she shapes her lips to say, looking between where Sam stands and the shallow hole Dean and Sam scratched in the dirt, fragments of infant bone a dull ivory among the tumbled earth.

 _No._ Dean tugs at Hannah's hand. _I want to show you something._

"Dean." Sam sounds frantic now. "What's going on? I can see her."

Dean's eyes open wide. That's never happened before. Is it because she's jostled just far enough into the real world to see it for what it is, that allows Sam to see her for what she is? Maybe. No time to ask.

"Dean?"

Dean begins to walk backward, not letting Hannah go for a second. She trails reluctantly with him, her semi-solid toes digging into the sweetgrass, dragging her heels. Dean pulls her slowly but inexorably, squeezing her fingers and nodding his encouragement. _Good, Hannah. You're doing great._

Out loud, to Sam, he says, "Two sons. She had two sons, Sam. One like me. One like you."

"Like me how?"

Dean falters, stumbling a half step. "Younger. One younger." This, Sam doesn't need to know. Not all of it. It's not to keep him safe, because fuck knows Dean's had to accept that if there's trouble, Sam'll figure out the fastest way to fall headfirst down that slope no matter what. Dean just… he doesn't want Sammy to see himself like Hannah sees him, saw him, as blighted and evil and judged without a jury. 

The touch of the yellow-eyed demon, does that equal the "gold" Hannah talked about, that made her want to kill Sam? Maybe. Probably. But Benjamin wasn't evil, he was a kid. Didn't even know how to talk.

So Dean doesn't think there's any evil in Sam besides what comes natural with a guy when he's born. Evil's a choice. So's not doing evil.

And then there's Dean, doing his job.

Out loud, Dean says, "Gotta concentrate here, Sam. This isn't as easy as it looks."

"No shit, Sherlock. I --"

"Sam, work with me here. Help me. She needs peace, Sam. She needs to be laid to rest."

"You don't --" Dean's not looking at Sam, but he can _see_ Sam's jaw drop, and then his face squish up into angry frustration. "You feel _sorry_ for her? How? How can you feel sorry for her after what she's done?"

"Explain later." Dean's getting distracted, losing his hold on Hannah. Sam needs to be quiet. Really, really needs to hush and --

" _Dean._ "

Dean loses his cool and his control over his tongue. "Because I'm not her son, and neither are you, but she died like Mom!"

Sam's shocked into silence. Almost. For the space of a breath. "The same thing killed her?"

"The demon. Yeah. Shush, Sam." 

Sam quiets. Dean knows how hard a blow like this lands, and he'd regret dealing it out, but… later.

Right now, Dean coaxes Hannah on. _That's it, that's good. One step at a time._ And as he leads, Hannah _follows_ , slowly losing her resistance and walking with Dean, her wary curiosity almost catlike.

Dean doesn't stop until they've crossed the sweetgrass and come to a patch of dry, dead earth Dean will never be able to wash out of his mind. Where he saw, on his knees, rain of fire surrounding him, the spot that Joey's body landed on when Saul kicked him. Where he looked and saw it empty, looked toward the forest and saw the wolves dragging what was left of Joey way. 

Bile rises thin and bitter over his tongue, but Dean doesn't try and push it back. He feeds Hannah that mental image, knowing how much it'll hurt her to see. He shows her, through his memory, that Joey's already long gone on.

Dean kneels next to the spot, the soaking mud only normal-freezing, squelching and soaking him. As he goes down, Dean draws Hannah with him. 

She'll only go so far; Dean doesn't push for further. He has her hand, and Hannah hovers over him, all wide eyes and horror and confusion. She understands, or is starting to, and she doesn't want to. 

_Here,_ Dean thinks to her. _Here's where Joey died._

Dean pulls her spectral hand down and presses it to the soil, where maybe a hundred years ago her son's last breath seeded the dirt.

"I'm sorry, but you're gonna believe me," Dean says quietly. He's learned not to yell. It's like Dad yelling at Sam; they could go until they shouted themselves deaf and neither would say they were right or wrong. Dean's learned that sometime Sam needs to be guided. And so does she.

"No," she whimpers, digging uncertainly, then frightened, fast.

Dean's ready for this. He squeezes his eyes shut tight, fast, and feeds her new pictures, taken from the deep core of his memories -- careful to keep Dad out of them, he's figured she thinks Dad is Saul -- crazy stuff, nothing huge, but each one crystal sharp and the best he can draw up. 

Teaching Sam how to stitch a bullet hole, or how to drive with both headlights busted out, how to make dinner out of hot-dogs and crackers, how to get a decent night's sleep in the backseat with his head on Dean's lap, or even to try and figure out how to kiss when he's never kissed before. All things neither of her kids ever got old enough to do. Dean shows her every way in which he and Sam are poles apart from them, and how he's done right by Sam every day of his life like a brother should. And more. 

"See? Look at it in your head, in my head. We're different. We're new." Dean lets go of Hannah. "They're gone. You gotta let us go too."

Hannah stills. The clouds stop their churning, though they hang heavy and blood-dark overhead. Dean can't see anything but her hand and the earth where Joey fell. He hopes it's enough.

When Hannah shudders, Dean holds tighter; when she throws back her head and keens in grief and horrible understanding, he doesn't let her go. She reaches for Dean, but not to grab him. She's begging him to take the knowledge away.

"I'm sorry. No," Dean tells her. "Sam?" Dean calls out loud. "Come here."

"Dean --"

"Trust me, Sam. Come here."

Behind him, Dean hears Sam take a deep, scared breath -- he can see, in his mind's eye, Sam working up the nerve -- and he does as Dean's asked him to. He comes to them.

Dean stands when he hears Sam come into range. "Put your hand on my shoulder, Sam."

Sam wraps his arms around Dean's waist instead. _Okay. Even better._

"See?" Dean asks, again out loud, widening the split between he and Hannah with a step backwards, Sam keeping them both from falling. "I'm alive. So is he. I'm with him and I can't be yours." 

Hannah's fingers go to her cheek. She jumps at the non-feel of her ephemeral skin; she shakes her head, hair flying; she covers her eyes. A thin streak of lightning jumps from black cloud to black cloud in the sky.

But nothing more.

"Go," Dean tells her. "You can. Bet he's waiting for you. Bet he wants his mom." _I know what that's like. Believe me, I do._ "Go."

Hannah looks back and forth between them, hand pressed to her mouth, biting the back of it, confused and teary and scared.

"He's waited a long time," Dean says, tired. "Go after him. Go home."

Hannah covers her eyes with her hand. A broken sob -- relief or sorrow, Dean can't tell -- strangles in her ghostly throat. 

And then she's less. Her outline fades, drawing down to shadows and light strangely bright against the pervasive darkness she's drawn from the elements around them.

And then she's all light, white and flickering --

She's negative, the absence of shadow --

And then she's gone. Childlike singing, chiming like faint silver bells, lingers behind her, fading away in echoes that bell out, softer and ever softer.

The sun breaks through the clouds above, hot yellow sun rising in the sky. The clouds part and dissolve, and there's blue behind them. 

Sam's arms tighten around Dean's waist. "You did it," he says, sounding stunned.

 _I did it._ Dean laughs, choppy with amazement. He drags his hands through his hair and clasps them on top of his head. _Fucking A. I **did** it._

_There._

_**Now** it's over._

Dean's legs give out from beneath him, but that's okay. Sam steadies him and keeps him upright. Sam pokes Dean in the shoulder with his stupid pointy chin and squeezes him. "Can we get out of here?"

" _Hell,_ yes," Dean says with deep feeling. "We're done here."

He turns to Sam, getting his first real look at his brother in days. Dean takes it all in, every scratch and smudge of dirt and the start of hollows in Sam's cheeks and the dark circles under Sam's eyes. He looks as much as he wants at Sam's big stupid face, warming under the sun, at _Sam_ , and lets it go to his head.

When he reaches up to snag Sam by the back of his neck and haul him down, Sam comes. Sam presses his hands to Dean's face and lets their mouths slant together, quiet, real.

They're not done with everything. There's the "later" Dean's put off, the "what next". What to do about Dad, where to go with Sam -- what he wants with Sam -- but they have the time now. Although truth be told, Dean's already made up his mind about most everything he wants.

But that should be okay. Given the weight and strength of Sam's hold on Dean, Dean doesn't think Sam'll disagree with what he has in mind.


	28. Chapter 28

The sun's bright now that it's come out from behind all those heavy clouds, shining down so sharp and proud Dean thinks he might get a sunburn. He knows he'll end up with an odd dozen or more new freckles scattered over the backs of his hands and his nose. Sam'll just get a good start on browning up again, which Dean thinks Sam does just to piss him off.

It's a _fantastic_ day.

They can't get started walking back to the shelter right away, need to take care of putting this place completely to rest first. Without salt or fire they don't have many options, but Dean comes up with a few ideas, Sam develops a few more, and they make do. 

Dean suggests saying a rosary over one of their two bottles of water -- Sam found them near the tree line amongst some storm-broken pine saplings, the clear plastic battered by hail yet still somehow intact -- and Sam pulls a _you're nuts_ face when Dean suggests they bless it, but Sam remembers his Latin best and Dean hopes it's good enough to make the spring water holy. 

This is Dean's responsibility, so it's Dean who takes care of sprinkling the scraps of bone in Benjamin's grave, baptizing him before covering him back up, another quarter of the bottle over the spot where Joey fell and Hannah disappeared, then walking the last precious drops around the shanty in a sunwise circle. Sam pulls out the Latin-fu again with a hopefully not too mangled version of Last Rites and maybe Dean imagines it, but he'd swear there's almost a settling to the burned, tumbledown boards, a groan as it rests deeper in the earth, as if it's finally at peace too. Places remember things as well as people.

Sam argues back when Dean wants to change the bandage on his leg -- it's soaked through with mud and hail, and like hell he's letting Sam go septic. When Sam points out they've got exactly jack shit that'll work better, they compromise on cutting Sam's jeans off at the knee and hoping the sunshine and air circulation will help. Dean decides to make the best of it and keep a look out for signs of infection just in case.

Besides? He gets to mock Sam relentlessly about how stupid he looks with one long skinny leg and bony knee exposed. Sam sucks at comebacks, mumbling one about how Dean's hair looks like someone jizzed in it, sticking up everywhere -- to which Dean, lying on a mat of sweetgrass, propped up on his elbows, takes as the right and proper ammunition it is and waggles his eyebrows at Sam, tongue caught between his teeth.

Sam turns as red as Dean's gonna get with the sunburn, presses his lips together in a thin line, and turns his back on Dean to sulk. Again, Dean doesn't mind. He figures he can tease Sam about _that_ , too, and later, when they're clean and _fed_ , oh God, Dean doesn't know which one he wants first or most, he can let Sam know in a casual and manly way that the pouting? Is actually kind of hot.

Their work takes up a good chunk of the afternoon, longer than either Dean or Sam would have liked to get ready for the trek back. Dean reckons they might be out of natural daylight hours before they reach the shelter, depending on how slow a pace they set. Still, it's not half as cold as before, and the sun's warmth should linger until they get a good fire going. 

Quiet now, the burst of adrenaline giving way once again to exhaustion, Dean and Sam dry up for words for a while, waiting for their second wind. Still, Sam slings his arm around Dean's shoulders as they head for the tree line, jostling him. Thanks, approval, appreciation, maybe all of the above. Dean hip-checks Sam -- carefully -- and reaches up to scruff Sam's hair. 

Everything's gonna be okay now. No, better than okay. Good. Great, even.

Except, as he and Sam push their way through the loblollies and fir, their hands gaining a new layer of sticky sap on top of the dirt, heading up over rocks and fallen logs and down muddy slopes slippery with wet, dead leaves, Dean knows now is when he has to let Sam know what's on his mind. 

Not easy. Dean has to take a deep breath, twice, three times, straining his abused lungs, and fist his hands tight for a moment or two to work up the balls to force himself past all his training to keep his mouth shut about what he wants to tell Sam.

Sam doesn't push Dean beyond a few curious looks and an air of waiting while he holds back branches low enough for Dean to conk his head on, scattering pine needles on both of them in a green shower.

Dean takes his time, crafts his words together careful as a carpenter measuring joints, and waits for the right moment. When they reach the creek -- and damn, it looks innocent in the sunlight filtering in streaks through the heavy tree cover, clear and still cold, moving faster as if the water's got somewhere to _go_ now -- Dean figures: this is where he should make his stand.

"Break for ten," Dean suggests, crouching and dabbling his fingertips in the water. He savors the good natural tingle and rubs his palms together in the current. "Go upstream of me and fill the bottles, then come back here and stick your leg in." 

Sam cracks up. "What, now?"

"C'mon, it'll feel good, and can't hurt to wash the mud off."

Sam quirks an eyebrow, but doesn't argue. _See?_ Dean thinks, lazily pleased in the warmth of the late afternoon sun and quiescent despite hunger and weariness. _Sam's not like Dad thinks. You've just gotta argue the way Sam thinks, is all._

 _Dad._ Yeah. There's a hornet's nest. Still, though, still… Dean rubs the softer skin beside his eye, brushing his cheek as he goes. He blinks at the feel of how long his stubble's gotten. He has to be a quarter of the way to a beard.

A flash passes through Dean's mind's eye of, once they're clean, taking unfair advantage and whisker-burning Sam until he cries for mercy. The idea improves Dean's mood; more, it reinforces his decision.

What Dean wants is for he and Sam to go it alone. Maybe it was Sam who planted the seed of the idea in Dean with his rebellion and his never-ending questions and his mule headed stubbornness, but Dean's taken the yearning and made it his own.

So now, they'll talk. It still ain't easy, but after what they've just been through at least laying it flat-out and honest to Sam isn't as hard as it might have been before.

Dean shifts from foot to foot, toes squelchy in his boots, and shakes the water off his not-clean but at least cleaner hands. He pitches backward, planting his ass on the side of the creek, and rests his arms on his knees, hands dangling free, and watches in quiet patience while Sam takes care of business.

Without being told or even asked, when he's done Sam comes to sit beside Dean. He's close enough to warm Dean's side that extra few degrees, close enough for the motion of his breathing to chafe their arms together. 

Dean picks up a pinecone, perfectly ordinary pinecone, and picks off the bits one by one, tossing them in the creek, where they're carried away who knows where. "So."

"So," Sam echoes, turning his face to the sun.

 _Man up, Dean._ "So. When we get out of here, what's the first thing you want?"

Sam wrinkles his nose. "Huh?"

"Dude, we used to play this game all the time. 'What if'." Dean tosses two scraps of pinecone one right after the other, _plip, plip_. "Humor me. If you could have anything you wanted waiting on you when we get out of the woods, what would it be?"

"Huh." Sam gnaws at his lower lip, thinking seriously about the question before answering, "Penicillin."

Dean snorts and smacks Sam's shoulder. "Okay, clearing up the rules. Something _good_."

"Penicillin _is_ good." Sam laughs and holds up his hand, palm out, to ward off another punch. "Give me a minute." He takes the pinecone away from Dean and twists the ragged-ass middle. "A shower," he decides. 

"That the best you can do?" Dean scoffs. He looks up at the sun, same as Sam. 

"What, that's not enough?"

"Lacks style, Sam. Let's see… I want a hot shower. In a clean shower stall. All the water I want and some huge towels, too." Dean loses himself briefly to the fantasy. He could use a shower in the worst way -- aw, man, steaming hot shower, the water temperature high enough to redden his skin, Dove soap because nothing that smells piney or woodsy or anything like a forest is getting _near_ him for years, if he has his way. 

And Sam in there with him, maybe? Dean likes the bubble of anticipation that rises warm and fluid in his chest. He's only ever gotten lucky enough to shower with ladies maybe two or three times -- he wears 'em out so that they fall asleep not long after -- and he's enough of a player to know the key to lasting good memories is to keep 'em close until they've fallen asleep, and he never stays the night. Almost never. 

Guess that's something new about Sam. Something good. Sam'll always be there when Dean wakes up in the mornings -- even if evidence already suggests Sam's one of those wham-bam, roll over and snore types. Dean's okay with that, he just wants to make sure Sam knows how to reciprocate and hey, there's a lot to teach him. 

Dean thinks he's looking forward to that. 

Sam slides his hand up Dean's leg and rests his palm not too close to tease, but enough to let Dean know Sam's still got sharp enough eyes and a quick enough mind to know e-damn-xactly what Dean's daydreaming about. "So after we're clean," Sam says, hopeful and nervous. "What then?"

"Food," Dean responds immediately. He'd meant to tease Sam, ratchet it up a notch, but they both moan for a totally different reason once food enters their heads. FOOD.

"Bacon," Dean says. "Thick-cut bacon, chewy, crispy, I don't care, I just want a plate full of it. Piled up, even."

"Scrambled eggs," Sam groans. "Fried. Boiled. Poached."

"You have a weird hard-on for eggs."

"You're the one pitching a tent over bacon," Sam points out, literally.

Dean leers at Sam until Sam realizes that bacon equals pork equals, yeah baby, and Sam groans, making a _thwap_ sound when he covers his face with his hands. Dean whoops with laughter and pats Sam's knee, still drowning in the sunlight that warms him from the outside in and back again.

"Is there _anything_ you can't turn into a dirty joke?" Sam grouches, kicking pine needles into the creek.

"Nope," Dean says cheerfully. "What, you want me to stop?"

"No," Sam mumbles.

"So okay, back to the food." Dean's maybe getting a little too into this and drifting from the point, but c'mon. FOOD. "Pancakes? Waffles with whipped cream for me and blueberries for you? Or hey, I know, how about hash browns? Or home fries, soft all the way through with cayenne pepper and salt and --"

"Dean?" Sam squeezes Dean's leg, fingers flexing uncertainly. Dean can feel the weight of Sam's gaze on the side of his cheek.

Dean lets out his breath, dreams of steaming hot fritters coated in cinnamon-sugar fading away right when he was just about to _taste_ them. "Yeah. Sorry." He clears his throat. 

Although… it's not a bad segue, as transitions go. Dean laces his fingers together, pushing his thumbs back and forth, and looks away from Sam -- then decides that's a cheat, not playing fair, and looks back. Sam meets Dean's eyes, level and calm in a way that's come to Sam during this hunt. Dean likes the steadiness as much as he hates the too-old look that flashes through the hazel every now and again.

"I can cook," Dean volunteers, heart in his throat. "You remember when you were little, and you were picky as hell? Wouldn't eat in a diner unless we tied you down. So I always tried to get us rooms with kitchenettes and made sure the stove worked if we settled in an apartment for a while."

"I remember." Sam's forehead wrinkles, then smoothes; he's tickled. "Dean, you suck at cooking."

"Shut up, I do not." Dean pushes him.

"Actually, you really kind of do." Sam eases up. "Sorry. You were heading somewhere with this?"

"Um. Yeah." Dean drops his head, rolls his shoulders, and comes up swinging. "I could cook instead of us eating out. If we found someplace. I don't know, maybe with a garage I could work at, and a school where maybe you could stick around until you graduated. Every night, I could grill us both up a hot cheese sandwich, and every morning I could wake up to burn-my-tongue coffee I brewed for myself just the way I like it. I'd share." He looks sideways at Sam. "If we. You know. If you wanted to, I guess I could."

Sam nods slowly, taking this serious. "What about Dad?"

This is the part Dean's uneasiest about, and the piece of his mind that's the hardest to pry loose. He doesn't back down, though. "What _about_ Dad?" he asks, voice shaking the tiniest bit. "He knew what was out here. Had to. Hannah recognized him, and she knew hunters. Don't ask me how I know, I don't want to get distracted; I'll tell you later. Just trust me right now, okay?"

Sam looks grave and worried, but he nods.

Good enough. Dean goes on, tugging the ragged edge of his sleeve for something to keep his hands busy. "He left us to do the best we could on our own. So I say that's what we do." He tears some threads loose and winds them once around his fingers, then tosses them aside. "We walk, but to the next town. I hustle some cash, we get on a bus, and we go. We find that town with the garage and the school and what-the-fuck ever else you want."

"Huh." Sam works his jaw, looking ahead of him, deep in thought.

Dean waits, his palms starting to sweat when Sam takes longer than Dean had thought he would to answer. 

But when Sam does, Dean thinks he could either collapse with relief or punch the air with his fist for a _hell yeah!_

"I'd be okay with it," Sam says, turning back to grin at Dean, slice of white in the middle of tan and dirt. 

"Bitch, you gave me a heart attack waiting!" Dean elbows him.

"Yeah, well, that's part of my job. Seriously? Yeah. I'd like that. As long as there's a kitchen, because I really want a grilled cheese sandwich now. And hey, you know, you could even get your GED," Sam goes on, kneeling up, because Sam's happy too, and that pushes his "talk" and "action" buttons. Dean can roll with that. "Maybe college afterwards. You don't have to hunt forever."

Dean flashes back to Hannah, tattered and grieving and _tired_ , and knows better. "I kinda think I do, Sam."

Sam quiets. "Yeah." He shakes himself and gets a stubborn on like he's putting on a mantle. "So I guess you have to put up with me hunting, too. With you."

Dean can't hold back his relief, blazing at Sam. "Awesome. But after you graduate."

"And you." Sam's chin comes up. "I'm serious."

"C'mon, Sam. I'm not good with book stuff," Dean hedges.

Sam's nostrils flare. He looks like a bull that's just seen a red flag. "Don't pull that crap on me. You're smart. You know you are." He jabs Dean's shoulder with his forefinger. _Ow._ "An idiot wouldn't have been able to do what you did back there. So I get hunting, there's things we can do other people can't and shouldn't, but you're more than just a gun with a hand attached, okay?" Sam's getting worked up now, downright damn fiery in his defense of Dean's smarts.

There's only one real way to say "thanks" and "I know" and "shut up" and "sounds like a plan to me" at the same time, and lucky Dean, smash-mouthing Sam silent suits both Dean and Sam just fine.

 _Also, mental note for the future,_ Dean thinks, keeping his eyes open and focused on Sam's, looking back, _it works like a charm when nothing else has a prayer._

***

Sun's nearly set by the time Dean and Sam make it back up the hill to the shelter. Dean's face warms when he thinks about wasting time making out by the creek like it's a chick movie or something, which would have been okay except he zigged when Sam zagged and they ended up falling in the water. But hell, in lieu of a hot shower a cold water douse cleaned off a lot of the muck caked and coated on both of them. 

They're still fine. The walk's warmed Dean and Sam both back up after the spring water chilled them, the last of the day's light gentle in the way it brushes over Dean's face. As he walks, Dean finds himself humming. It's not a bad day, all things considered. Nice limber burn in his arms and legs, hands good and flexible and ready to grip a knife handle or kindle a fire. His neck's not stiff like usual, moves smoothly, no tension knotting up the back and hurting clear to his eyes, nothing pops when he cricks his head to and fro. 

Fire, shelter, food even if it's from an MRE, sleep, Sam, fire, money, bus tickets, Sam, food, Sam -- Dean can't remember being this happy, like he's about to pop out of his skin with too much.

It makes him careless. Dean doesn't catch the movement, even though it's small, when he and Sam top the final rise, elbowing each other and snickering over crazy shit that's only funny because they're so tired and loopy with excitement. Dean knows as soon as he spots the tiny glint of light off metal that he should have _known_.

Sam stops in his tracks, hand coming up to push on Dean's chest. Sam's color drains away.

The last of the sunlight is still enough to see by. To see, pulled up to the edge of the shelter, the gleaming black hulk of the Impala free of road grime or mud or anything, sweet a ride as ever but -- Dean tastes blood when he grinds his teeth, and his hands form rock-solid fists. 

Dad sits on the hood of the Impala, cleaning a long-barreled gun. Waiting. For them.


	29. Chapter 29

Dean knows this isn't the first thing he should think of -- or maybe it is -- but he's seen Dad clean guns before. For all minus four years of his life, Dean's watched Dad break down weapons, check for flaws, and put 'em back together.

This is the first time ever that Dean's ever wondered about what it's like being on the wrong end of the barrel.

Dean's stuck in place there, at the edge of the woods, caught between what was and what could be. What he wanted crashing down around what he has. _Fuck_ , is all he can think. _Not now. Come on, not now!_ He can't breathe for anger and the fear, can't move, can't speak. He watches Dad clean the gun, and he's about to shake apart.

"Dad?" Sam breaks the silence first, one word like a broken twig, smaller than it should be, scared as much as Dean is. Sam grasps Dean's forearm, kneading the flannel, pulling it too tight. 

Dean swallows down a knot in his throat the size and hardness of a pine heart. "What are you doing here?"

"Waiting for you." Dad's tone tells Dean that yeah, it was a stupid question. What else could he possibly have come for? He examines the gun's barrel, sighting down to his left. "Took you boys long enough." 

_Took you boys long enough._ The words echo in Dean's ears. 

Dad doesn't swerve his focus from the gun, but Dean knows John Winchester never had to depend on just his eyes to know what was going on around him. In the growing sticky darkness of past-sunset but not-yet-night, Dad'll depend on his ears and his nose.

For a second, Dean falls back into the old ways, where he'd barely even notice. Rationalizing in the blink of an eye. There's no reason for Dad to stop what he's doing and look at them. It's not like he could get a decent look at Dean or Sam in the growing darkness. There's no physical _reason_ why Dad shouldn't finish the job he started before all the light's gone.

 _Yeah,_ Dean thinks, hands clenching. _You know what? The hell with that._

Dean pries Sam's hand off his arm. 

"Dean, don't," Sam says in Dean's ear, hot where Hannah was cold but equally desperate. "We know these woods better than he does by now. Let's just turn around and run. Please?"

"I'd suggest you didn't," Dad rumbles, trading gun oil for a polishing cloth. He's got the tools of their trade laid out on the Impala hood, neat rows, every single thing in its place and clean like it's an operating table.

Dean looks at his hands, scraped raw, scratched, cut, grime packed tight under his nails. He smells himself, ripe and reeking and foul, the stink rising in waves off his filthy clothes. Sam's solid presence behind him draws images to Dean's mind of the black circles under his brother's eyes, the weight he's lost, and the gash in his leg, still seeping drops of blood. 

Dean looks at himself and Sam, and then looks back at Dad with his neatness and order, and he's dizzy with the force of wrath burning in his gut. 

"Sammy, let go of me." Dean pushes Sam away, not hard but hard enough that Sam stiffens up, angry now as well, his shock fading.

"Dean, he's doing this on purpose. Turn your back and let's go if we want to get away," Sam warns. Asks? Dean can't tell. He can barely think straight. "Dean?"

Dean doesn't answer Sam. He forces himself through that first step, his body still arguing, and it gets no easier after that but he's not stopping now. He passes through the last of the trees. He steps up on the bench and stomps over the damn picnic table with their duffels still tucked underneath, pitifully slack with how little is left of the not-enough Dad doled out for them. A jump from there brings Dean to the edge of the shelter, and then it's only three feet of crunching over gravel before he comes to a stop one foot shy of the Impala, of Dad.

Dad polishes the barrel of the gun. "There something you want to say to me, Dean?" he says, the deep rumble and his tone telling Dean he's not about to put up with any crap. 

Dean lifts his chin. "Yes, sir."

"Fine." Dad carefully lays the cleaned gun -- it gleams -- aside on a chamois cloth, careful of the weapon, treating it with something close to reverence. He looks Dean in the eye and he's so _Dad_ , steady and solid and _family_ that Dean almost falters, almost loses it.

Then he thinks about Sam, and about Hannah, and he has what it takes again to ask the question. "Why?"

"Why what?" Dad rests his hands on his knees, not looking away. "Is that the question you really want to ask?"

"Yeah. It is." Dean holds his ground. "You knew she was out there. Didn't you? You tricked us from the start. All that about walking to the coast was bullshit."

"Watch your mouth."

"No." Dean's hands shake a little. He fists them, and that feels better. "You kicked us out here on purpose so we'd have no choice but to put her down, not if we wanted to live."

"That's not a question, Dean, it's an answer." Dad's expression is unreadable, but Dean knows the warning that hides not far below the surface when Dad's voice is this flat. 

He's baiting a snake, Dean knows it. Training wired so deep down he's never thought about it before is choking Dean; it's the same kind of crazy freefalling risk as whirling the copperhead by its tail. The need to fall in line is suffocating him.

No. That's wrong. No, no, _fuck_ , no. Not after all they've been through. He needs something to hit. Something solid he can crush, something to do with all this betrayed rage. Dean gets why Sam always used words against Dad. Can't beat him with fists. 

Dean lashes out. "You set us up, Dad. Why?"

Something dark and dangerous flashes in Dad's eyes. "You think I'd do that?"

"I know it." Dean wants to look away. He doesn't. "How could you do that to us, Dad? Forget me. How could you do that to Sam? What'd either of us do to deserve the way you left us here without what we needed to hunt, or even to survive, Dad? Huh? How?" Dean's shaking by the time he runs out of breath, shudders going bone-deep and twisting him up inside. "Well?"

Dad might as well be carved out of stone for all it seems to bother him. "You already know all those answers, or you should. Couldn't anyone hunt her if she knew they were coming." The confirmation cuts deep. Dad's admitting it. He _did_. He used them like -- like guns. "Radio interference gets nasty around here, always has. The weather blocks every channel."

"So?"

Dad's eyes narrow. Dean knows he's missed something. "You made do with what I gave you."

"But it _wasn't enough_ , not if something worse had happened, and that's not the point! Dad, we could have died. You were just gonna sit there and let that happen? Would you even have come back --" 

Pieces of an ugly puzzle click in Dean's head, and he knows what he missed moments ago. The Impala. The radio. How Dad knew where to find them. Why he's here _now_. 

"You've been here watching us the whole time, haven't you?" Dean sees that Dad doesn't deny it. Doesn't even flinch. Doesn't react at all. "You were. Waiting for the radio to clear before you showed your face. You _knew_ what we were up against and you never once raised a finger to help --"

Dad slides off the hood of the Impala. He's taller than Dean, stockier, more solid. Almost looming, or is that a trick of the failing light, or is that just Dean's memory filling in gaps in the real world? "You would have been safe as if you were asleep in the car if you'd used your head once on this hunt --"

"I did!" Dean protests, stung to the core. "I laid her -- Hannah --to rest. Me. I figured it out, I kept Sam alive, and me, we almost died I don't know how many times --"

Dad watches him silently.

"Dad, it's not -- I don't --" Dean holds his physical ground, even if he can feel the words that'll help him slide out of his grasp. "You want to do this to me? Fine. I can take care of myself."

"Can you? Didn't look much like it to me. Looks like you did poorly enough to half-starve when there's a forest full of stuff to eat, and you both forgot enough of your training to get hurt."

"I did what I could! I did what I had to."

"Wasn't good enough, though, was it? You got lucky. Luck isn't skill."

Dean falls silent, stunned. He's numb; it's like being hit by something huge, like some big bone breaking, the moment of blank emptiness before the agony hits. "No," he falters. "I knew what I was doing. I did."

"And you're walking away with scars. Not good enough." Dad's dark as thunder. "You've got a hell of a lot left to learn, Dean, before you can even _think_ about going off on your own."

" _Dad._ " Dean's close to breaking. So damn close. This hurts. "You lied to us. Both of us. That's not what we do, Dad. That's not what our family's supposed to be like --" Dean's air gives out as his voice cracks. 

"Times change, Dean. You either learn to roll with the new or you get rolled over. We're done here. Sam!" Dad shouts over Dean's shoulder at Sam, still hovering at the tree line. He slides the long-barreled pistol he was cleaning under his belt, at his back. "Get the bags. I want both of you in the car before I count sixty. Is that clear?"

Dean looks back in time to see Sam draw up, eyes going wide as Hannah's, Sam's body stretched tall, thin and nervous, as ready to run as a spooked buck. 

Sam looks to Dean, not Dad, asking _Dean_ what he should do.

Dean shakes his head. "Stay where you are, Sammy."

Sam stays.

"I gave you an order, son. Both of you." Dad opens the driver's side door of the Impala, the _screech_ of the hinges driving home like a nail in Dean's heart. Home. That car's the only home he's known since Lawrence. 

Dean takes a step backwards. "Times change, Dad." He faces his father, his muscles tight and his lungs on fire. "We're not coming with you."

Dad leans on the open door of the Impala. With the very last drops of the setting sun behind him, Dean can't see his face at all. It makes this easier. And harder. 

"I'm taking Sam," Dean says, facing up to the dark he can't see Dad in. "Did you hear me? Me and him, we're both done playing this stupid -- game. We're leaving."

Dad's quiet just long enough for Dean to know the brewing storm's about to crack open. "Where do you think you're going to go, Dean? Where do you think you _can_ go?"

"I don't know. We'll find a place." Dean senses his body drawing up and tight, his arms crossing behind his back, a soldier at attention. He hates it, but he can't seem to stop it. 

"You could try. Thing is, Dean, as you point out, Sam's only sixteen. And he is my son. You take him, you're kidnapping him."

"Dean?" Sam asks, a hint of a quaver in his voice. Dean knows Sam knows Dad's right. Dad could take Sam back, and use the law to get him. Could send cops or the CPS and have it all end up with Dean in jail.

Dean crosses his arms tight. "Do what you gotta do, Dad. But I'm telling you now, you gave him up. Sam's mine now."

Dad looks at Dean through narrowed eyes, dark and flat, for a long minute. "Sam's not your whole family. One thing I'd hoped you'd learn from this hunt. You need your family. You need me."

Something shatters deep inside Dean, like a pressure valve popping open, but it hurts no less. "I did. And you left me."

Dad stops.

"And I learned how to do without you," Dean shouts. And then, the floodgates fall open. Dean couldn't shut up now even if he wanted to, and he doesn't.

"You kicked us out like we were nothing, Dad, you _used_ us like we were cannon fodder." Dean moves forward with each word until he's just shy of up in Dad's face, breathing like he's running a race, heart churning fastfastfast. "And you think you get to just walk back here like nothing ever happened? Fuck that! " Dean tries to steady himself and fails, too close to the lightning not to burn. 

Dean makes himself back up one step. Just one. Far enough to look at Dad and wonder when it all went to hell and why he never noticed before now. His voice shakes, and Dean hates himself for it, but no, he can't stop. "Dad, I have done everything you ever asked for. I never asked for anything for me. I never did anything wrong, I did _nothing_ , and that's what you did to me. To Sam. You tossed us out like we meant nothing. Screw you, Dad. You don't get to do this. Ever again."

"And if I let you go?" Dad scorns. "How long until you come crying to me? You can't watch out for Sam on your own. You got him hurt --"

"You're the one who put him at risk in the first place --"

"And you're the one who couldn't keep him out of it, Dean." Dad advances like a thing out of the dark, all black anger and accusations as sharp as the teeth of a black dog. "Because you were careless, you're the one who almost got him killed. Time and time again, Dean, you were too slow, you didn't think, you didn't plan ahead --"

Something snaps inside Dean. "I _can_ take care of him! I always have. I can watch out for him better than you _ever_ did!"

Dean's too worked up, his blood too hot. He hears the screech and slam of the Impala door, and he registers Dad's moving forward, but he doesn't see the punch coming. Doesn't even know he's been hit until he's on his ass, gravel chewing holes through his filthy shirt and jeans, sharp in his back. 

"Dean!" Sam skids to his knees beside Dean; one quick look at Dean and Sam's rising above him, teeth bared. "I'll kill you, I swear I'll kill you --"

"Sam, don't!" Dean says around the coppery skin of blood on his tongue. "Dad, stop it!"

Sam throws himself at Dad, fists flying -- and Dad's not about to stand there and take it. He knocks Sam down, but Sam doesn't stay down for a second, just gets up and plows in again. "Don't you hurt him, don't you ever hurt him again, or I'll --"

Dad knocks Sam flat a second time like Sam's no heavier weight than a feather, and stands above them, both of them on their backs in the gravel. "You'll what, Sam? Or what about you, Dean? What'll you do?" 

Stunned silent, Dean licks off a thin trickle of blood running from his nose over his lip. It's not like it hasn't happened before, but -- but -- 

He's blank with surprise. But only at first. 

Then, rushing back in a tidal wave, he's angry. No. He's furious. Pushing away from Sam, because this is his to do, Dean gets to his feet. Nothing's broken except his family. All of it -- the lies, the stab in his back and Sam's, the challenge they were set up to either win or die and fail either way, all the times he's looked out for Sam against the _one_ he messed up and how Dad never looked at him the same way again, how it's the same thing over again -- all of it, it floods down Dean's arm in a rush of strength and fury, and he swings his fist _the way Dad taught him_ \--

Dad doesn't go down. But he does go back one step, then another. 

There's quiet between them, silence so deep that neither Dean's ragged breathing or Sam's shocky inhalation breaks it.

When Dad speaks, Dean can't tell what he's thinking. "Is this who you are, Dean?"

"I don't know. Maybe." Dean puts out his hand for Sam to take, to help Sam get up. "Doesn't matter. If this is who you are now, then that's who I am."

"You honestly think you can do a better job?"

Dean moves in front of Sam. "I already have."

The silence hangs thick, heavy, choking --

And then Dad turns away. He _turns away_. 

"Dad?" Dean waits, wary, on his guard, half his attention on Sam, half on Dad. 

Dad doesn't look back. "You think you're up to this? Do your best. Or your worst. Go on. You want it, you take it, but you'd better understand this is the last we'll see of each other."

Dean almost expected it. It still hits hard, heavy, blunt. "Ever?"

"That's your choice, isn't it? Here. If you think you're hot stuff, then prove it. Hit the road. Hell, here's a car." Dad slams his fist on the roof of the car, the _bang!_ making both Dean and Sam flinch. "Get behind the wheel and drive off, tough guy."

Dean's hurt and his anger shriek in his head, clouding out any sense. He raises his fist, starts forward --

Sam catches Dean. A hand to Dean's shoulder, shocking as the cool mountain night wind that washes over them with a sudden change in the air. "He's not worth it," Sam says quietly, for Dean alone. "He doesn't matter. You and me. We do. Let's get out of here. Please, Dean?"

Dad says nothing, does nothing, is nothing besides blank. It doesn't make sense. It's like he _wants_ them to go. 

He waits too long to ask, caught in his confusion.

Dad walks away. "You boys feel like training and learning a few things -- God knows you won't be taught by me -- stop by Bobby's. Maybe he can knock some sense in your heads. And if you ever feel you want to try doing something useful with your lives again, have him contact me."

"Don't count on it." Sam winds Dean back in his arms, chin high, staring John down. 

Under the fierceness of Sam's stare burning holes in him, Dad starts to turn. He stops himself just as fast, then walks tall and walks stubbornly away without a goodbye. 

Dean wouldn't have gone after him, but Sam doesn't give him a chance. He pins Dean fast and won't let him go, not even after Dad's disappeared around a bend in the road.

"He's gone," Dean says, anger still there but in a holding pattern, too dazed to act on it. "He left."

"No." Sam's chin digs into Dean's shoulder. "Last time was when he left. This time is when he made us go." 

The rusty growling of a big engine starting surges up from around the bend where Dad disappeared. It almost throws Dean -- how long's it been since he heard another vehicle? -- and the white blaze of the headlights nearly blinds him. He throws his arm over his forehead, shielding his eyes.

A truck, old, huge, dark blue, drives past. Dad's behind the wheel. He drives past them without slowing down or stopping. Dean watches until the tail lights are out of sight, and until the bright spots quit burning his eyes. Feels just like the last time Dad drove away. 

Only… not. 

Understanding slams home, sharp as a nail in a coffin. Dad planned for everything else that happened so far.

He planned for this fight, too. Made it happen. Had another car waiting to take him away. Dad's as gone as he can get, and he's made it damn clear there's no going home again.

"Dean?" Sam plucks at Dean's sleeve, wrapping himself around Dean from behind, hanging on like the kid he still sort of is, needing comfort. "What's he…"

Dean takes Sam's hand and grips it hard. He knows he's as blank as Dad, watching Dad drive away without a word. "Doesn't matter." He lifts his head and doesn't shed a tear, and leans his body weight into Sam's. Sam has his back. He always will. "It's you and me now," Dean says. "We're on our own."


	30. Chapter 30

"Hold still," Dean says, wiping an alcohol swab over the cut on the back of Sam's calf, trying to clean away the last of the dried blood. 

Sam hisses and flinches.

Dean stops. "You okay?"

"Yeah. Sorry." Sam waves blindly backward at Dean. "Go ahead."

"Working as fast as I can." Dean rests his free hand on Sam's uninjured leg. "Think you can hang in there?"

Sam mumbles something affirmative in response, but all the same Dean sizes Sam up before goes on to make sure Sam's not about to pass out. For once, the dark isn't a problem. The dome light in the Impala works, and though it's past midnight Dean can see his brother fine as he's laid out on the backseat, on his stomach. 

A final once-over with a fresh swab to make absolutely sure he's done it right, and Dean's finished with the worst part. He pops Sam on the hip as he reaches for the gauze in the fully-stocked first-aid kit stowed in the footwell. "You still with me?"

"M'fine," Sam says, muffled by his forearms. He finishes off with a yawn, jaw-crackingly loud, and fidgets. "Almost done?"

"Almost." Dean makes quick work of salve and gauze and tape, applying a pressure bandage. He sighs, relieved at finally getting that ugly wound under cover. His work should last until he can get Sam to a real doc. "You want to stretch out back here until we're off the mountain?"

Sam looks up and back at Dean over his shoulder. "We're leaving now?"

 

Dean settles back in his awkward position with one quarter of his weight on the edge of the backseat and three quarters on nothing. The air's sticky and humid, just enough of a hint of breeze sending wisps of cloud across the night sky. "You telling me you want to stay a minute longer than we have to?"

"Hell, no." Sam struggles upright, nearly clocking Dean in the chin. Dean stumbles out, Sam wriggling after him. "I can navigate."

Dean would like to argue, but he decides against it. Sam'll pass out after a few miles. He can sleep while Dean drives. "Yeah, okay. First stop after we find a clinic to get patched up in -- diner or motel? Your choice."

"For real?" Sam's grin is bright enough to blind him. Dean wants to catch his breath and to kiss his brother stupid at the same time.

He settles for both, and he makes every second of it count. Sam's all he's got now and that means more than ever, both strange and awesome, and maybe a little scary, too, but not in a bad way. An iron mantle's worth of weight Dean's never known he'd carried on his shoulders left with Dad, dizzying him with freedom. It's like if Dean wanted to, he could fly. 

Sam's breath is warm as he shares it with Dean. "So," Sam says, hopefulness in his voice, his eyes closed, "we're good now, right?"

Dean kisses him quiet. _Sam's all I've got now. S'okay. Sam's all I need._

***

John listens through three clicks on the other end of the cell connection before someone finally picks up on the other end. 

"Yeah?" Bobby snaps in John's ear, his voice rough-edged with sleep. "Whoever in hell's callin' me this early better have a good reason."

When John doesn't speak right away, he can tell it pisses Bobby off.

"Hello? I ain't in the mood for prank calls or wrong numbers, and if some idiot's drunk dialing me they're gonna feel the back of my hand --"

"Bobby," John says, cutting him off. When he speaks, John can taste the smells of wet dog, beer and old engine grease embedded in the truck. They are and aren't foreign at the same time. He keeps reaching for the gear stick when this is an automatic shift.

 _Inhale._ "It's done," John says. _Exhale._

Bobby knows who he is now. Knows what he's talking about, too. "John Winchester, you are a goddamn idiot."

"Didn't have any other choice." John turns the windshield wipers on. It's raining, gray and drizzly at the Virginia border, headed up to Roanoke. His journal's open on the seat next to him, a page with the single word "Croatoan" written across the middle.

"There's always a choice --"

"Not this time."

"-- and it don't involve dumping your two boys, including the one who worshiped you like a tin god, out of the side of a backwoods road!" Bobby's anger crackles through the line same as if they were face to face. 

John clears his throat. "You going to hold up your end?"

"This ain't no deal we cut between _us_ , John."

"I told them to come look for you when they had need."

"Dammit, John --"

"I gave Dean his mother's ring," John interrupts. He takes a left-hand turn, not bothering to signal. No one else travels these roads after midnight, lost and forgotten in the backend of nowhere. He's not lost, though it'd be easy to get that way.

"What in the hell possessed you to do that?" Bobby asks after a sputter or two.

"Need to know basis." John's keeping his temper, but only just.

"If I'm meant to keep an eye on these boys while you go do God knows what else idiotic to hunt down that demon then I expect I 'need to know'," Bobby snaps, sounding fully wide awake now, probably reaching for the hat hung on a nail over his bed. 

_Some things never change,_ John thinks. _Sometimes, they all change._

He switches lanes. _The ring's so you'll remember to be careful, Dean. To tell you to keep an eye on Sam, not just to protect him, but to do what you have to, if it comes to that. So you don't forget your mother or her ancestors, and what that bastard demon did to all of us, past and present. So maybe you understand someday why I did what I did._

"Tell him it's to remind him of his family," John says instead. 

Bobby snorts, out-and-out disbelieving John, John can tell. Makes no difference. It's the truth, or close enough to it. "And Sam?"

"He doesn't know where I'm headed." John cuts Bobby off before Bobby cusses again. "Neither does Dean. Safer this way."

"How in the hell is it _safer_?"

"They don't want to come after me now, and they won't."

Bobby stews silently for a moment. The gray sky darkens, humid stickiness of the air pressing in around the truck cab, seeping through the cracks in the windows. "So you done all of it, then. Every damn thing I warned you was a bad idea."

"Left 'em the car. Everything that was in it, too."

"Well, then, that solves everything, don't it?"

"Appreciate your giving this truck a hitch down," John says over Bobby's sarcasm. 

"Shoulda stayed to beat your fool head in. If I'd'a known what you planned before I made the drive --"

John's had enough. "This is how I'm keeping them safe. They'll watch out for each other, and Dean's seen what the demon can do now. He knows it all by heart. He'll know what he has to do if Sam -- he'll know."

"How you can swallow all that crap about Sam and demon armies and the goddamned _antichrist_ \-- you ain't got the sense God gave a dog. Demons lie, John!"

"And sometimes they tell the truth."

"Those boys will never forgive you, and I can't say as I blame them."

_Yeah, I know. And I don't guess you'll ever understand what it cost or why I **had to** , to keep them safe from the demon. Don't guess Dean or Sam ever will, either._

"That's my problem to deal with, isn't it? You just make sure you give them those protection amulets when they come by." 

"Give the amulets to them your own self! Turn this around before it's too late, would you? You think you're protecting your boys, John, but you are failing them --"

John's temper frays through and breaks. He can't listen to any more of this, because he _cannot_ change his mind now. What's done can't be undone. "Tell that to your wife, Bobby."

Hate fills the brief silence. "I would shoot you if I had you in my sights right now, John."

John disconnects the call. He tosses his phone on the empty passenger seat next to him, on top of his journal. He's got hundreds of miles to go and a demon's final plea-bargain in the fight not to be exorcised, telling him where to start looking for Yellow Eyes. 

He opens the truck's glove box, reinforced strong and secure, and takes the long-barreled gun out of its temporary holster in his belt. One eye on the road, one eye on the Colt that demon told him Elkins had. John reads the inscription for the hundredth time. _Non timebo mala._

_I will fear no evil._

"All right, then," John says, stowing the gun. He rubs his chin, brushing over a spot of dried blood where Dean hit him. He's got a decent right hook. Sam too, for that matter.

 _I did what I had to do,_ Dean says, echoing in John's memory. It's branded there for the rest of his life.

John returns his attention to the road, watching the miles go by, silent in his head, his ears full of the sound of heavy rain.

***

Dean clicks on the radio and tunes in Metallica. Sam's already asleep in the passenger seat, an empty twenty-four-hour fast food bag crumpled between his feet. For his part, Dean savors the last sips of his coffee, strong and black and hot. Best he's ever had.

He reaches over to ruffle up Sam's hair and tug his ear. Sam mumbles "quit it", but he half-smiles as he lays his head to rest against the window. Dean chuckles quietly to himself, pats Sam's arm, and shifts gears, accelerating.

 _Yeah. We're good, Sam,_ Dean thinks, answering the question Sam asked earlier. _I think we'll be okay._

It's around two a.m., the sky above them dazzling clear with its field of stars, it's warm inside the car, and they're maybe halfway to Boone, driving US 421.

[ ](http://pics.livejournal.com/thehighwaywoman/pic/0000qtgt/)


	31. Chapter 31

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Author's notes that were four years in the making, oh my. There aren't many. 

While I call this a mini-nano, it was actually written and posted mid-March to mid-April 2008. (If a rulebook exists, I will inevitably wander afield of it.) It was posted as a serial, one chapter (scene) per day, each scene written the day it was posted. 

I started off with a seriously detailed outline. Plotted to the Nth. 

_Ha._ Took about four days before I realized that Sam's discovery of a quarter with a hole in it had sent my entire outline down the U-bend and sent me careening along with something constantly changing, ever-evolving, and surprising the absolute hell out of me almost every day. They dictated. I went along for the ride. 

_Originally, this was meant to be an AU rewrite of Cynthia Voigt's "Homecoming"._ That right there will tell you how unexpected the story became. 

Back then, I'd thought perhaps I'd write a sequel to this. Hasn't happened yet. But I'd like to try the serial format again someday. 

And to end with a note of random trivia: while writing, I visualized Hannah as a combination of the nurse in "Folsom Prison Blues" and feral/Pylean Winifred Burkle. I didn't expect to feel sorry for her, or care about her. And _yet_. 

If you made it this far, thank you for reading! Love to you all, now and always.


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